Permanent Magnets

How do permanent magnets really work ?

The usual answer given by scientists involves spin states of the electron shells of the atoms of the permanent magnet material. Sounds good but for one problem. Spin states in electrons in an atom are random from shell to shell. Despite the Ising model, which is simply statistics, there is no explanation as to how a permanent magnet can be formed from non ferromagnetic materials.

There are a few things I have observed that gave me my present idea of how this really works.

For one thing, magnetic domains have a minimum size. For any given material, to retain permanent magnet status, the crystal size comes in a minimum. The larger this minimum, the stronger the permanent magnet.

There are other magnetic effects than simple ferromagnetic or ferrimagnetic effects. Diamagnetism is one in particular that I find most telling.

A superconductor can be made into a permanent magnet at a macroscopic level if a current is trapped in the material and this is related to what led Ampere to deduce most of his theories. The idea that a permanent magnet was a current of electrical energy in the matrix of the magnet was born.

There were, of course, problems that could not be explained by this. For one, the Tc (Curie temperature at which all magnetic effects dissappear) could not be explained by this since a white hot conductor can still generate a magnetic field.

A second observation was the creation and behaviour of superconductors. They have a Tc (Here called a Critical Temperature) and exhibit many of the behaviours of magnetic materials.

The third observation came when ceramic superconductors came into being.

This leads me to conclude that magnetism is better explained by the domains of a megnetic material are molecular sized superconducting loops.

This would allow any material to potentially be a permanent magnet if the superconductivity can be confined to small domains or regions (for amorphous materials).

What this implies is that supermagnets can be made even stronger if the crystals can be ordered more cleanly. It also implies that superconductivity can be achieved at and well above room temperature. And there are already superconductors that work on a cold winter day.