Understand the energy transformations that happens when you light a bulb with a battery. Activity requires students to build a simple circuit and take temperature and time measurements. Lab includes procedure with questions that can be...

Answers to many Frequently Asked Questions on magnets and magnetism.

Students explore the magnetic field surrounding a simple bar magnet. They can drag the compass around in the space surrounding the bar magnet, and observe the effect of the magnet on the compass needle.

You can create a stronger, more concentrated magnetic field by taking wire and forming it into a coil called a solenoid. (Java tutorial)

Physicist Felix Bloch developed a non-destructive technique for precisely observing and measuring the magnetic properties of nuclear particles. He called his technique "nuclear induction," but nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) soon became...

In MRI, magnetic fields and radio wave pulses combine to get a unique, and medically beneficial, response from your body's hydrogen atoms. Take a peek in this tutorial.

Chemist Paul Lauterbur pioneered the use of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) for medical imaging. He developed a technique, now known as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), in the early 1970s that involves the introduction of gradients in...

An interesting activity where students make a ferrofluid (a liquid with magnetic particles floating in it) and explore how it responds to a magnetic field. Well illustrated.

[Free Registration/Login may be required to access all resource tools.] Why the Earth is a magnet and how its inner structure relates to its magnetic field.

A module that uses pictures, videos, reading passages, and review question to go over what a magnet and magnetic pole are, and how magnetic force is related to magnetic field. This site may require free registration to access all...

This is a five-question quiz related to the passage "The Effect of Contrast Agents on MRI Signals."

William Gilbert was an English physician and natural philosopher who wrote a six-volume treatise that compiled all of the information regarding magnetism and electricity known at the time. The work included descriptions of many of...

A well illustrated activity where students investigate and draw the magnetic field lines created with a bar magnet and a compass.

A good explanation of what the property of magnetism is and how it occurs naturally in lodestone and can be generated in metals such as steel. It describes how a ferromagnetic material such as iron becomes magnetized when near a...

What makes a magnet? Learn all about magnets in this Q&A section. Educator resource materials are linked to this site.

An online activity which illustrates the magnetic property of diamagnetism associated with water. Contains a simple procedure and then a good explanation of the magnetic interactions that were displayed by the grapes.

Although he is best known as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time, Carl Friedrich Gauss was also a pioneer in the study of magnetism and electricity. To facilitate an extensive survey of terrestrial magnetism, he invented an...

[Free Registration/Login may be required to access all resource tools.] The Earth's magnetic field and how it protects life on Earth, and how it is used for navigation.

[Free Registration/Login may be required to access all resource tools.] Discusses what a magnetic field reversal is and the evidence that this has happened with the Earth.

An article defining what magnetic force is and how to calculate it.

Learn what magnetic fields are and how to calculate them with this reference page.

Electromotive Force (EMF) and its sidekick, back EMF, are interesting electromagnetic phenomena that aren't really forces at all. (Java tutorial)

When a magnetic field is applied perpendicular to the flow of current, the field causes resistance in the current. This is the Lorentz force at work, and can be observed well in the Hall effect. (Java tutorial)

Find out more about German physicist Wilhelm Weber, who developed and enhanced a variety of devices for sensitively detecting and measuring magnetic fields and electrical currents.