Usefulness of Magnets

Arnaldo López Rivera

When I was younger I was intrigued by magnets, even though I never understood how they worked in a deeper level. All I knew was that magnets attract each other based on their polarities, in that opposites attract while same polarities repel. After reading and taking a few physics and engineering courses I have found many diverse uses for magnets, besides hanging up papers in the refrigerator. You may wonder. What are magnets useful for? The answer is magnets are useful in a wide variety of areas, such as medical equipment, electronics, and transportation.

For starters in the medicine field, most magnets are used for the diagnosis of medical problems, such as physical and organ function. Some of the equipment that use magnets are MRI, hearing aids, x-rays, and VCD. In MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging), uses superconducting magnets to form images of the inside of a human body. While hearing aids use magnetic fields to increase the ears ability to hear. And finally there’s a VCD which uses a magnetic rotor, in order to pump blood and aid those with failing hearts who cannot afford a heart transplant.

However the are where magnets truly shine is in electronics. First, without them televisions would not work. The reason for this is because there are magnets inside the cathode ray tubes, which deflect electrons towards any region  allowing us to see the images on the screen. Secondly without them all of our media carrying devices would have nowhere to store the information, such as IPODS, PS3, XBOX, PSP, computers, etc. The reason for this is because hard drives use magnetic fields in order to read and/or write data (which is also known as magnetic reading). It is possible to see the effects of magnets on electronics, for example if you put a magnet against an old computer, the screen would crash or if you’d put it against a floppy disk, all the information would be erased.

And lastly magnets can be used in the transportation industry. For example in cars magnets can be found throughout the whole car, such as in the motors, the electric window motors, are in the alternator. The alternator uses a magnetic field in order to convert the mechanical energy put into the motor into electrical energy. Another example of transportation, is in roller coasters, magnets are used to cause a propulsion at the start of a ride usually; and they’re also used to gradually slow down a roller coaster, making them a cost effective method for brakes.

Magnets have a wide variety of uses, ranging from a refrigerator magnet to a motor, and a media storage device. They are of high importance in today’s society, which relies heavily on technology. Without magnets we would not have a means for transportation, since most motors, if not all use magnets. We would also not have many of the electronics we use in our home every day, such as computers, and gaming devices, because we would have no way to store all the programs in order to make the device work efficiently. In retrospect today’s society has come a long way thanks to the usefulness of magnets.