Magnetism is one of the most used concepts in physics. At every point in time the earth, your body, everything is being affected by magnetism. It is not to strange of a concept to master. At least to start out in magnetism.
In most materials, countless electrons have randomly oriented spins, leaving no magnetic effect on average. However, in a bar magnet many of the electron spins are aligned in the same direction, so they act cooperatively, creating a net magnetic field. This will make the magnet able to attract oppositly and neutrally charged objects. It is not complicated to understand how they work it more difficult to understand the area that they affect things in. Look at the example video of the way that the charges affect objects.
In most materials, countless electrons have randomly oriented spins, leaving no magnetic effect on average. However, in a bar magnet many of the electron spins are aligned in the same direction, so they act cooperatively, creating a net magnetic field.
In nature, magnetic fields are produced in the rarefied gas of space, in the glowing heat of sunspots and in the molten core of the Earth. Such magnetism must be produced by electric currents, but finding how those currents are produced remains a major challenge.
Today electromagnetic fields (and other types of field as well) are a cornerstone of physics. Their basic equations, derived by Maxwell, suggested that they could undergo wave motion, spreading with the speed of light, and Maxwell correctly guessed that this actually was light and that light was in fact an electromagnetic wave.
An electromagnet in its simplest form, is a wire that has been coiled into one or more loops, known as a solenoid. When electric current flows through the wire, a magnetic field is generated. It is concentrated near (and especially inside) the coil, and its field lines are very similar to those for a magnet. The orientation of this effective magnet is determined by the right hand rule. The magnetic moment and the magnetic field of the electromagnet are proportional to the number of loops of wire, to the cross-section of each loop, and to the current passing through the wire.
If the coil of wire is wrapped around a material with no special magnetic properties (e.g., cardboard), it will tend to generate a very weak field. However, if it is wrapped around a "soft" ferromagnetic material, such as an iron nail, then the net field produced can result in a several hundred- to thousandfold increase of field strength.
Uses for electromagnets include particle accelerators, electric motors, junkyard cranes, and magnetic resonance imaging machines. Some applications involve configurations more than a simple magnetic dipole, for example quadrupole and sextupole magnets are used to focus particle beams.
