[Free Registration/Login may be required to access all resource tools.] Explains how Earth is a magnet, its geographic and magnetic poles, and its magnetic field.

Prof. Eric Hellstrom of the lab's Applied Superconductivity Center uses a toy train to demonstrate magnetic levitation, the Meissner Effect and magnetic flux trapping. [6:30]

Earth's magnetic poles have reversed themselves throughout its long history. Find out what scientists know about these reversals. A geologic time line shows when the reversals occurred.

Magnetic core memory was developed in the late 1940s and 1950s, and remained the primary way in which early computers read, wrote and stored data until RAM came along in the 1970s. (Java tutorial)

A discovery by Hans Christian Orsted forever changed the way scientists think about electricity and magnetism. While preparing to perform an experiment during a lecture at the University of Copenhagen, he found that the magnetized needle...

Isidor Isaac Rabi won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1944 for his development of a technique for measuring the magnetic characteristics of atomic nuclei. Rabi's technique was based on the resonance principle first described by Irish...

The earth's magnetic poles have reversed themselves throughout the earth's history. Find out how scientists know that this happened.

A current can be induced in a conducting loop if it is exposed to a changing magnetic field. (Java tutorial)

The railroad industry began in the frontier days, magnetic levitation has moved it squarely into the space age.

Anders Celsius is most familiar as the inventor of the temperature scale that bears his name. The Swedish astronomer, however, also is notable as the first person to make a connection between the radiant atmospheric phenomenon known as...

The history of electricity and magnetism starts with this special mineral possessing amazing, and still mysterious, properties.

Named in honor of Danish physicist Hans Christian Oersted, Denmark's first satellite has been observing and mapping the magnetic field of the Earth.

Spurred by Hans Christian Orsted's discovery of a relationship between electricity and magnetism, German chemist Julian Schweigger immediately began tinkering and soon came up with a very early galvanometer known as the Schweigger...

Peter Debye carried out pioneering studies of molecular dipole moments, formulated theories of magnetic cooling and of electrolytic dissociation, and developed an X-ray diffraction technique for use with powdered, rather than...

Walther Meissner discovered while working with Robert Ochsenfeld that superconductors expel relatively weak magnetic fields from their interior and are strongly diamagnetic. This phenomenon, commonly known as the Meissner effect or the...

How magnetic reversals on the seafloor provide evidence for seafloor spreading. [Free Registration/Login may be required to access all resource tools.]

[Free Registration/Login may be required to access all resource tools.] How magnetic polarity provided more evidence for moving continents.

[Free Registration/Login Required] A literary text about life from a magnet's point of view. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in reading comprehension.

This comprehensive study guide covers the main terms and concepts needed for an earth science unit on the earth's shape and magnetic field. Review questions are included at the bottom of the study guide.

The magnets here at the lab can generate massive amounts of heat. To cool them off, we need massive amounts of water. But first, we have to take the ions out.

Although he was not the first person to observe a connection between electricity and magnetism, Andre-Marie Ampere was the first scientist to attempt to theoretically explain and mathematically describe the phenomenon. His contributions...

John Ambrose Fleming was an electronics pioneer who invented the oscillation valve, or vacuum tube, a device that would help make radios, televisions, telephones and even early electronic computers possible. A brilliant innovator,...

At the turn of the 19th century, scientists were beginning to gain a rudimentary understanding of electricity and magnetism, but they knew almost nothing about the relationship between the two. Baltic German physicist Heinrich Lenz took...

[Free Registration/Login may be required to access all resource tools.] Examines Earth's magnetic field.