Are partial monopoles possible?

[DreamThinkBuild]

Hi All,

Not sure if this has been posted before or old news but I found this out by accident when trying to clean my desk. A stack of magnets slammed into a 1/4" thick iron rectangle, when checking the magnets for damage I noticed that a compass nearby the needle constantly pointing at it no matter the direction of the plate. It only flipped when it got near the magnet stack.

I thought it was pretty odd so I grabbed the magnet tester and it read south on both sides and ends. By bringing the south side of another magnet near it, it repelled on both sides and ends. The magnet stack top will read north but everywhere else on the plate is south. If the south side is brought close to the iron it will stick but otherwise if slightly away from surface it will repel.

This should be easy to replicate all you need is a stack of magnets, a thin iron plate and compass or magnet tester. Another magnet also to show that it's repelling on both sides. It may work with steel also, have not tried yet.

I'm a little stumped why the plate is acting like a monopole, hope someone else can replicate to verify if I'm not just making a mistake somewhere. The repelling of a south facing magnet on each side is pretty convincing to me but I'd like others input.

[MarkE]

Hi All,

Not sure if this has been posted before or old news but I found this out by accident when trying to clean my desk. A stack of magnets slammed into a 1/4" thick iron rectangle, when checking the magnets for damage I noticed that a compass nearby the needle constantly pointing at it no matter the direction of the plate. It only flipped when it got near the magnet stack.

I thought it was pretty odd so I grabbed the magnet tester and it read south on both sides and ends. By bringing the south side of another magnet near it, it repelled on both sides and ends. The magnet stack top will read north but everywhere else on the plate is south. If the south side is brought close to the iron it will stick but otherwise if slightly away from surface it will repel.

This should be easy to replicate all you need is a stack of magnets, a thin iron plate and compass or magnet tester. Another magnet also to show that it's repelling on both sides. It may work with steel also, have not tried yet.

I'm a little stumped why the plate is acting like a monopole, hope someone else can replicate to verify if I'm not just making a mistake somewhere. The repelling of a south facing magnet on each side is pretty convincing to me but I'd like others input.

Everything in those pictures looks normal to me.  The black thing is an iron plate, right?  In each case where the detector indicates S, the S end of the stack looks to have a shorter reluctance path to the end of the detector than the N end of the stack.

[tinman]

A Temporary monopole field can be formed around steel sphere, thus giving the result in  that the steel sphere is being repelled by the magnet, insted of being attracted to it.
Might be handy in a SMOT type device.

[DreamThinkBuild]

Hi MarkE, Tinman, All,

Been doing some more experiments with polarizing metal and find that you can get steel nails to polarize easily. This might help people who want to do magnet experiments but reduce the magnet count. The fields don't seem to become easily stressed in this configuration. I know a couple magnet motor groups out there who may find this useful. 

[MarkE]

The nails are acting as pole shoes to the permanent magnets.  If you remove the permanent magnet and place one of the nails close to a compass, then you will find that the nail has two poles.