In reply to Mark Iverson-ZeroPoint's message of Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:11:45 -0800: Hi Mark, [snip] >Robin: >Thanks for the comments, and I see your chicken-n-egg argument... > >As I prefaced my comment about Horace's calcs, "I'm not sure if this is >relevant either..." >Please note that in many cases I am just doing a brain-dump in the hopes of >triggering some creative thinking. :-) > >OTOH, I'm not so sure I agree that, as you say, "... in an ordinary magnet >many (most?) of the atomic [magnetic] fields are aligned..." > >Magnetic materials are composed of 'magnetic domains'; regions where the >magnetic moments are more or less aligned in the same direction. However, >adjacent domains are randomly oriented, diminishing the effect for the bulk >material and, thus, the *external* magnetic field is *much less* than what >one would find in an individual domain. > >I am curious... if one were to look at the individual atoms (10^6 to 10^9) >in one of these 'magnetic domains', what percentage of the magnetic moments >are parallel???
Google "magnetic saturation". Regards, Robin van Spaandonk http://rvanspaa.freehostia.com/project.html
