Magnetism, explained for curious minds
Britain's shift from timber to iron hulls turned the humble compass into a maritime puzzle. Victorian compass adjusters had to separate the Earth's pull from the ship's own magnetism, inventing correctors and procedures that still shape modern navigation.
Walk into almost any UK food factory and you'll pass equipment doing silent, unglamorous work: magnets pulling stray metal out of flour, sauce and ready meals. Here's how magnetic separation actually works — and where its powers stop.
Certain alloys heat up when you magnetise them and chill when you switch the field off — a trick that could one day cool your food without a compressor. We look at the physics, the British labs chasing it, and the reasons your kitchen still hums.
A fist-sized neodymium block can claim a 200kg pull on paper, but a British canal is not a clean steel plate. Here is the physics behind magnet fishing, the environmental questions it raises, and the practical rules beginners should check before they uncoil a rope.
A fox arcing into a snowdrift is one of the most quoted examples of animal magnetoreception — and one of the least settled. We pick apart the famous pouncing study, the cryptochrome chemistry behind the idea, and what would actually count as proof that British wildlife can sense the geomagnetic field.
Birmingham Airport's maglev shuttle ran from 1984 to 1995, carrying passengers on a 15 mm cushion of magnetic attraction. Its rise and dismantling say less about whether levitation works and more about what it takes to keep a magnetic transport system alive.
Before a single trench is opened, a surveyor walking a field with a pole can sketch the plan of a Roman farmstead. Magnetic surveying works because soil remembers fire, rot and ploughing. Here's how it reads that memory — and why British ground is unusually good at keeping the record.
Most of us meet an MRI scanner as a letter, a wait, and then a noisy tunnel. Inside that tunnel sits a superconducting magnet strong enough to lift a car, cooled by a vanishing gas. Here's the physics of the bore — and why helium maths ends up shaping NHS waiting lists.
Britain's STEP fusion programme is planned for Nottinghamshire, but the make-or-break hardware may be the superconducting coils that confine the plasma. This is the quiet industrial story behind fusion's most demanding component.
From induction hobs to contactless cards, ordinary British homes are full of quiet magnetic machinery. Here is a room-by-room tour — plus one familiar object that people often assume is magnetic but usually isn't.
Every modern wind turbine is a quiet piece of applied magnetism, and some of its most valuable parts are buried in the generator. As Britain's offshore wind fleet grows, the question is not just how to build more turbines but what happens to their magnets when the blades stop turning.
Britain has museums for canals, clocks, lawnmowers and spies. Yet the force that helped us navigate the globe, discover electromagnetism and predict space weather still lacks a dedicated national home. Here's the case for a museum of magnetism.
Your compass needle is honest, but it isn't pointing at the top of the map. Magnetic north has wandered thousands of kilometres since it was first pinned down, and the drift reshapes the arithmetic behind every paper map and hilltop bearing in Britain. Here's what is moving, why, and how the surveyors keep up.
Every modern phone carries a tiny sensor that measures Earth's magnetic field — the same field that ripples when a solar storm hits. Here's how the chip works, what it can realistically detect, and a few experiments UK readers can run at the kitchen table.
Solar activity is still running hot, and that means more nights when the auroral oval sags far enough south to clip the British Isles. Here's what Earth's magnetic field is actually doing up there, why the lights keep appearing over places like Norfolk and Yorkshire, and how to give yourself a fighting chance of seeing them.
Magnets that supposedly wear out, water that has been 'charged' by a magnet, and the persistent hope that slicing a magnet in half gives you a lone north pole. We asked what the physics actually says — and what you can prove at your own kitchen table.