What substances are magnetic?

Magnetic substances are substances that have the ability to attract other magnetic elements or also known as magnets. The best known magnetic substances are:

- Iron

- Steel

- Cobalt

- Nickel

These substances, in addition to their combinations, have that property that allows them to attract or repel magnetic substances, with others. In the case that we try to join these substances with others that are not magnetic, that is to say, that they are not altered or affected by a magnetic field such as:

- Plastic

- Rubber

- Water

These non-magnetic substances will not be attracted.

Various elements are attracted by magnetic magnets, these materials can be divided into soft and hard materials. Soft materials are characterized by their ease of magnetization and demagnetization. Hard materials, on the other hand, have similar characteristics to permanent magnets, so, since they have a high BR, Hc, they have greater difficulty in activating or deactivating their magnetization.

How can magnetic substances be classified?

Magnetic substances can be classified depending on their properties, their behavior in the magnetic field, and magnetic permeability. Magnetic permeability is the capacity of different types of materials to attract or not metallic elements by means of magnetic fields.

All magnetic substances have in one way or another the presence of a magnetic field. The ability of a material to be magnetized by an external magnetic field is known as magnetic susceptibility.

How can we know the magnetic susceptibility?

The magnetic susceptibility is represented by Xm, we can get it by the relationship between the magnetization of the material and the intensity of the field that we want to apply.

Below, we can see the formula:

Magnetic susceptibility can be positive or negative, in case it is positive, we can classify it as a paramagnetic substance and ferromagnetic substance, on the other hand, if it is negative, we will classify it as a diamagnetic substance.

In this classification we find:

• Paramagnetic substances = Paramagnetic materials maintain their magnetism permanently. In addition, the magnetic susceptibility is small but positive. Paramagnetic substances contain electrons that are not paired.

• Diamagnetic substances = Materials that are composed of a diamagnetic substance repel magnetic fields, so as we have seen above, their magnetic susceptibility is negative.

• Ferromagnetic substances= Ferromagnetic substances are characterized by their high magnetic permeability.