Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

My 1st grader is doing his experiment on, Does temperature affect the force of a magnet? We did the experiment by recording the number of paper clips the magnet can lift at room temperature, having been in the freezer, and using the hair dryer to heat it up. We want to know what the conclusion is supposed to be but the research on the internet is too difficult to understand.

Hi!
This is a very interesting project. Ultimately, heating the magnet will cause the magnet to lose its magnetism. Usually this happens if the magnet has been heated above the "curie temperature", which is an extremely high temperature. However, this project deals with much lower temperatures so ultimately the result will be that the hotter the magnet, the worse it is. Hopefully the following link is more informative-
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 923AAophK4
Hope this helped!

Hi dmsm,
Here is a detailed discussion of the effects of temperature on permanent magnets:
http://www.magnetweb.com/Sect3A.htm
I realize that some of the concepts there might be unfamiliar, so if you have any questions, please feel free to ask.
Regards,
Chris