Magnets

HISTORY

• The term magnetism stems from certain rocks called lodestones from more than 2,000 years ago in the region of Magnesia in Greece.

lodestones

• The Chinese were the first to use magnets. In the twelfth century, they used magnets for navigating ships.

chinese navigating ships

• In the eighteenth century, the French physicist Charles Coulomb studied the force between lodestones (which has been magnetite).

Charles Coulomb

• In 1820, Hans Christian Oersted, a Danish science professor, discovered a relationship between electricity and magnetism while demonstrating electric currents in front of a class of students when electric current was passed in a wire near a magnetic compass, both Oersted and his students noticed the deflection of the compass needle.

Hans Christian Oersted

• Magnets were then found to exert forces on current-carrying, which led to electric meters and motors. The stage was set for a whole new technology, which would bring electric power, radio, and television.