While I was doing my homework, I got thirsty and decided to go get a drink from the refrigerator. When I went to the frig, I looked at all the magnets that we have and all the pictures that the magnets hold up. There are magnets from all over because our family likes to collect magnets. I realized that this is related to physics. A refrigerator is made from iron, which means it is ferromagnetic. Because iron and nickle and cobalt all have an unpaired electron, that electron's spin isn't offset by another electron going in the opposite direction. This causes magnetism. The magnet is already magnetic meaning that all its unpaired electrons are spinning the same way. This creates magnetic north and south poles. The refrigerator has all its unpaired electrons spinning in all different ways. This is why it isn't magnetic. But, when a magnet is put on the refrigerator, it stays because the magnet changes the spin of the electrons on that part of the refrigerator, which creates north and south poles. If I tried to stick some other ferromagnetic object that wasn't magnetized, it wouldn't stick because just like the refrigerator, its electrons would be spinning in random directions and the domains would be pointing in different directions. So it wouldn't have poles to reorient the domains in the refrigerator. Something so simple that I always overlook has such interesting physics ideas in it.
