I was doing an experiment where a piece of aluminum was put in contact with a very strong magnet. Although aluminum is not magnetic, for a slight second the strong magnet caused the aluminum to be. Why does this happen? and what phenomenon is this demonstrating?
When you say magnetic, was the aluminum attracted to the magnet or repelled? If it was attracted I don't know what was going on, but if it was repelled and only for a slight second the reason may have been electrical currents induced in the aluminum by the magnetic field created a magnetic field in opposition to that of the magnet. In this case the phenomenon would be induction and electromagnetism.
aluminum is not magnetic. But it does exhibit paramagnetism. wikipedia: Paramagnetism is a form of magnetism that occurs only in the presence of an externally applied magnetic field. Paramagnetic materials have a relative magnetic permeability greater or equal to unity, i.e. a positive magnetic susceptibility, and hence are attracted to magnetic fields. The magnetic moment induced by the applied field is linear in the field strength and rather weak. It typically requires a sensitive analytical balance to detect the effect and modern measurements on paramagnetic materials are often conducted with a SQUID magnetometer. Unlike ferromagnets, paramagnets do not retain any magnetization in the absence of an externally applied magnetic field, because thermal motion randomizes the spin orientations. Some paramagnetic materials retain spin disorder at absolute zero, meaning they are paramagnetic in the ground state. Thus the total magnetization drops to zero when the applied field is removed. Even in the presence of the field there is only a small induced magnetization because only a small fraction of the spins will be oriented by the field. This fraction is proportional to the field strength and this explains the linear dependency. The attraction experienced by ferromagnetic materials is non-linear and much stronger, so that it is easily observed, for instance, by the attraction between a refrigerator magnet and the iron of the refrigerator itself. .
Can Aluminum Be Magnetized
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