Understanding Magnetic Forces and Questions

If you get hold of two magnets and you push them,

you can feel this pushing

between them. Turn it around the other way,

and they slam together.

Now what is it, the feeling between those two magnets?

What do you mean? What's the feeling-

Well-

...between the two magnets when you hold them?

There's something there, isn't there?

I mean that-- The sensation is that there's something there

when you push these two

magnets together.

Listen to my question. What is the meaning when you say that there's,

that there's

a feeling? Of course you feel it. Now what do you wanna know?

What I want to know is what's going on-

The magnets repel each other

...between these two bits, these two bits of metal.

Magnets repel each other.

And well then what does that, but what does that mean or why

are they doing that or

how are they doing it?

Uh, you're ask-

I, I must say I think that's a perfectly

reasonable question to ask.

Of course it's a reason-- It's an excellent question. Okay.

Uh,

b-but the problem that you're asking… You see,

when you ask why something

happens,

how does a person answer why something happens?

For example,

Aunt Minnie is in a hospital. Why? Because she slipped.

She went out, and she slipped on the ice

and broke her hip.

That satisfies people.

It satisfies, but it wouldn't satisfy someone who came

from another planet and knew

nothing about things. First you have to understand why

when you break your hip do

you go to the hospital.

How do you get to the hospital with the, when the hip is broken?

Well, because her husband seeing that she had their hip

was broken called the

hospital up and sent somebody to get her.

All that is understood by people.

And when you explain a why,

you have to be in some framework that you allow something to be true

otherwise you're perpetually asking why. Why did the husband call up the hospital?

Because husband is interested in his wife's welfare.

Not always. Some husbands aren't interested in their

wives' worth when they're

drunk and they're angry.

And so you begin to get a very interesting understanding of the world and all its

complications in order to, if you try to follow anything up,

you go deeper and deeper in various directions.

If for example we could go, "Well, why did she slip on the ice?" Well, ice is

slippery. Everybody knows that. No problem.

But you ask why is ice slippery.

That's kinda curious. Ice is extremely slippery.

It's very interesting.

You say, "How does it work?" You could e-- You see, so you could either say,

"I'm satisfied that you've answered me. Ice is slippery.

That explains it," or you could go on and say, "Why is ice slippery?"

And then you're involved with something because there aren't many things as

slippery as ice. It's very hard to get greasy stuff,

but that's sort of wet and slimy. But a solid that's so

slippery

because it is in the case of ice that when you stand on it they say

momentarily the pressure melts the w-- ice a little bit, so you got a sort of

s-- instantaneous water surface on which you're slipping.

Why on ice and not on other things? Because ice expands when it-- Water

expands when it freezes, so the pressure tries to undo the

expansion

and melts it. It's capable of melting it.

But other substances crack

when they're freezing and when you push 'em they're just as

satisfied to be solid.

Why does water expand when it freezes and other substance don't expand when they

freeze? All right. I'm, I'm not answering your question,

but I'm telling you how

difficult a why question is. You have to know what it is

that you're permitted to understand and allowed to be understood and

known and what it is you're not. You'll notice in this example that

the more I ask why,

i-it gets interesting afterwards.

My idea that the deeper thing is the more interesting it is.

And uh,

we could even go further and say why did she fall down

when she slipped?

That has to do with gravity involving all the planets and everything else.

Nevermind. It goes on and on. Now when you ask for example

why two magnets repel,

there are many different levels. It depends on whether you're a student of

physics

or an ordinary person that doesn't know anything or not.

If you're somebody who doesn't know anything at all about it, all I can say

is that

the ma-- There's magnetic force that makes them repel and

that you're feeling that

force.

And you say, "But that's very strange `cause I don't

feel kind of forced like that

in other circumstances." When you turn them the other way they

attract.

There's a very analogous force electrical force which is the same kind of a

question and you say that's also very weird.

But you're not at all disturbed by the fact that when you put your hand on the

chair it pushes you back.

But we found out by looking at it that that's the same force as a matter of

fact,

the electrical force, not magnetic exactly in that case.

But it's the same electric repulsions that are involved in keeping your

finger away from the chair because everything's made out of--

Its electrical forces

in minor, in microscopic details.

There's other forces involved, but this is connected to electrical forces.

It turns out that the magnetic and the electric force with

which I wish to explain

these thing, this, this repulsion in the first place, is what

ultimately is the deeper thing that we have to start where we can start

with to explain many other things that looked like they were

everybody would just accept them.

You know you can't put your hand through the chair.

That's taken for granted. But that you can't put your hand through the

chair when

looked at more closely why it involves these same repulsive

forces

that appear in magnets. The situation you then have to explain

is why

in magnets it goes over a bigger distance than ordinarily, and there it

has to do with the fact that in iron all the electrons

are spinning in

the same direction. They all get lined up, and they magnify the

effect of the force until it's large enough at a distance that you can feel

it. But it's a force which is present all the

time and very common and is in a basic force of

almost. I mean, I can go a little further back if I

were more technical.

But at an early level, I am just gonna have to tell you that's

gonna be one of the

things you'll just have to

take as an element in the world the existence of magnetic repulsion

or electrical, or electrical attraction, magnetic attraction.

I can't explain that attraction in terms of anything else that's

familiar to you.

For example, if we said the magnets attract like as

if they were connected by

rubber bands, I would be cheating you

because they're not connected by rubber bands. I shouldn't be in trouble.

You'd soon asked me about the nature of the band.

Then secondly, if you were curious enough, you'd ask me why rubber

bands tend to pull back together again, and I would end up explaining that

in terms of electrical forces which are the very things

that I'm trying to use the

rubber bands to explain, so I have cheated very badly you see.

So I'm not going to be able to give you an answer to why magnets attract

each other except to tell you that they do and to tell you

that that's one of the elements in the world of the different kinds of forces.

There are electrical forces, magnetic forces, gravitational forces, and

others, and those are some of the parts.

If you were a student, you'd go fur-- I could go further.

I could tell you that the magnetic forces

are related to the electrical forces very

intimately,

that our relationship between the gravity forces and electrical forces remains

unknown

and so on.

But I really can't do a good job

any job of explaining magnetic force in terms of

something else that you're more familiar with because I don't understand it in

terms of anything else that you're more familiar with