Question

You are designing magnetic motors. A colleague1 insists that like magnetic poles attract— north poles attract north poles and south poles attract south poles. You feel the need to remove this idea from his head. You possess three unlabeled bar magnets (that is, you don’t know which ends are N or S). Surely that will be enough. . . [Bonus points for writing this as a dialogue. Extra bonus points for writing this in iambic pentameter.]

Answer 1

Since, we have three bar magnets, we can find there polarity with ease using the knowledge of north and south direction. the experiment would be as follows:

1. Tie a magnet to with a thread and let it suspend freely.

2. The magnet will allign itself according to the north and south direction of earth. The side of the bar magnet pointing towards the north direction is the north pole of the magnet.Same is with the south pole.

3. Repeat the above two steps with other two magnets and label the poles.

Now, when we have the knowledge of the poles of the magnet, we can prove the fact that like poles repel each other. This can be done as follows:

1. Fix one of the magnets.

2. Bring any of the other two magnets close the first magnet. If we bring the north of the second magnet close to the north of the first, we will face a repulsion.

3. Just to make our claim more subtle repeat the above two steps with any two pair of magnets.

Thus we can prove that north pole will not attract north pole.