this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2025
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To be fair: "A magnet works because negatively charged electrons repel each other. "
"Why do negatively charged electrons repel each other? "
"..... Well .. Ok, so hear me out. You're going to need to understand quantum mechanics and then the fermion principal. Then you'll know that the electrons aren't allowed to occupy the same space, and the easiest way to avoid being in the same space is to not touch each other. The electrons know they aren't allowed to touch because they've studied fermions."
None of that is correct though.
Permanent magnets attract/repel because of aligned current loops in the material. It's an electrodynamic effect that's not related to Pauli Exclusion.
I've used magnets to cook rice, build motors, and a variety of misc dumb shit between but I have no idea of if any of this or the other post is even real
Just as God intended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO0r930Sn_8
That dude shared the Nobel prize for Quantum Electrodynamics, and is a legend of teaching physics. That few minutes might not teach you all about magnets, but it might convince you that understanding them is a a big big question.
Another interesting thing about Feyman's video is that since the time he made this, the reason of why ice is slippery has actually changed, and his long-standing theory is no longer observed as correct. It's a different reason, involving dipoles.