lightlyy, on 04 November 2009 - 06:44 PM, said:
questionmark said: Well, let me put it this way: names are relative, see when Volta invented(rediscovered) the battery he called the pole from which the electrons come positive and the ones they go to negative... not many years later they discovered he was wrong but for the sake of the peace the names never got changed.
Same case here...you can call them truck and steamroller if that makes you feel better.
Thanks questionmark,and Mattshark, ... questionmark , could you explain what you mean by "they discovered he was wrong" ?
magnetics/magnets are mysterious to me.. in that, both 'positive' and 'negative' poles attract certain materials .. equally ?
also mysterious ,to me, is the fact that a magnet will attract/pick up a limited amount of ,say nails, but after 'awhile' will be capable of picking up additional nails... where does the additional energy come from ?? .. or is it just that the act of performing the work causes further alignment in the magnet... making it 'stronger' ? thanks.
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electrons don't travel from plus to minus as Volta assumed but from minus to plus.
And the nails, steel magnetizes. That is, if you keep it long enough to a magnet it will be just as magnetic as the magnet. In fact you will be able to pick up a nail without the aid of a magnet with one of those nails. If you try the same number with iron you will notice that the same effect does not happen, as iron demagnetizes quickly once it is not near to a magnet.