Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How Magnets Work

Episode Date: August 12, 2023

You can stick them to the fridge or use them to transpose sound to tape, whatever they are used for magnets are surprisingly interesting. And knowing just exactly how and why magnets work will make you more interesting, which is why you should listen to this classic episode of SYSK.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is ICT. Over the years, I've compiled thousands of inspiring and thought-provoking quotes. And now, I'm passing that knowledge onto you and my new daily podcasts. ICT's Daily Game. In less than five minutes, I'll break down why these words matter and reveal personal stories that show them in action in my life. Listen to ICT's Daily Game every weekday on the I.Hard Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast and start your morning with me." Hey, this is Annie and Samantha and we are the hosts of Stuff Mom Never Told You, an intersectional feminist podcast tackling everything and anything. And now we have a book that digs into the issues that impact so many of us. For example, what was the Pantsy Revolution?

What if the Battle of the Sexes had gone a different way? Why is Prince Suleia, in fact, so amazing? This book answers all of those questions and more, giving historical context for why they matter to all of us now. Stuff on Never Told You, the feminist past, present, and future is out now. Available where books are sold, or get yours at stuffyshedreadbooks.com. Hey there, it's Josh and for this week's Select I've chosen an ancient episode from April of 2013. More than 10 years ago, can you believe it? And if you don't understand how magnets work

after listening to this one, well, then we didn't do a very good job of explaining it. Check it out and see what you think. We didn't do a very good job of explaining it. Check it out and see what you think. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with Guess Who. Tell him, tell him who I'm with Chuck.

Oh, Chuck. I'm with Chuck. And Jerry's in the room as well. And since the three of us are together in this room, we have Tom Stavicinato. Stavicinato. That's right. The podcast. I am so excited about this podcast. I know you would be.

So much so that I'm worried about it, because as you know, in anybody who even like occasionally listens to this stuff you should know is aware of, the more excited I get about a topic, the poorer job I do at explaining it. Yeah. See, I already did it. I should have said the poor the job I do. Yeah. It's true. So I'm just going to try to remain calm. Okay. Because all we're talking about is magnets after all, you know? And that's the way I feel. We usually balance each other up nicely like that. But you don't think that there is some, a certain cache to walking around,

understanding how a magnet works. Do you realize what percentage of the population you're a member of for knowing that? Maybe, maybe, and this is a guess, like 0.0029% of the human population. That was how magnet work. I don't know anybody else until we selected this and started reading it. Besides Tracy Wilson, who knew how magnet work. I think you are underestimating the curiosity of the general public for people to look up this stuff on their own All right I would like to hear from people if you already knew how magnetized like if we don't tell people this and they're just

Dumb dummies walking. I don't think that That's not at all what I think but I I get corrections on this and I think that will prove that people know this and more Okay, if you're if you're a physicist whose specialty is the I get corrections on this and I think that will prove that people know this and more. Okay. If you're a physicist whose specialty is the electromagnetic power, cracking their knuckles right now and listening to that. Right. Then, yes, we're going to mess things up. It's true.

But we have a general good, well, I'd say fairly detailed idea of why magnets exist. That's right. And we're going to explain that to everybody. It's all because of the virus. But not in any way, shape or form in a condescending manner. No, no, no. Because all we did was research and it's right. It's not like we're making magnets here.

No, we're just talking about them. You know they discovered these in Magnesia and Greece. Did you know that? What? Magnets. Like natural magnets. Yeah, like load stone. In magnesium and grease. Is that really a place?

Yeah. Magnesia. Absolutely. You're not pulling my leg. Nope. Okay. But it was load stone, a type of magnetite. Yeah, it was magnetite.

Because that's the strongest, naturally occurring magnet, right? Like you can attract a paperclip just with this rock. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it is. Even cooler though, are the ones that humans have conquered and mastered and own. That's right. Because all the magnets you come in contact with on a daily basis,

maybe a weekly basis, have been manipulated by humanity. See, I never come in the contact with magnets. You know something? It's hard to find a decent magnet these days in an average store. Like, you have to like, mail off for them. Oh yeah, yeah.

And I don't have a refrigerator magnets because, you know, the stainless steel fridges, you can't put a magnet on them. That's so weird. You can put it on the side. So we have a few, you know, you get magnets over the courts of your life, whether it's like the pizza delivery guy has a, like we have one in the shape of a pizza slice

with their number on it. You do. And that's on the side. And like our vet, like we have a vet magnet. In the shape of a pizza slice, this is number one. And then like, you know, random people have given me magnets here and there, which I'll throw up there on the side. That's good.

Those are nice, but mentors, you mean like, like a lot of times. You did? Yeah, that's nice. That's great. So anyway, I don't have a lot of magnets or experience with magnets, but I understand them now. Now that you say that, I realize that I have more experience than I realized with magnets, but I understand them now. Now that you say that, I realize that I have more experience

than I realized with magnets, because you mean I do have a pretty good magnet collection? Well, there you go. On our fridge. But yeah, it always struck me as weird that stainless steel couldn't put a magnet on that. Now I understand why. Stainless steel is not a ferrous metal.

That's right. You have to have a ferrous metal like something say iron, nickel, cobalt, aluminum even. Oh really? I think so because there's a type of magnet called the Elnico magnet. And that's aluminum nickel, cobalt alloy. Yeah, if you've got a really good guitar amp

You might have an alnico speaker. Is that right? Yeah, they're they're pricey Oh, yeah, I can imagine like you can buy the speaker separately and like switch it out in your amp to make your amp sound better Which I've been meaning to do for years, but they're just kind of pricey. It's like 400 bucks just for the speaker But how's the sound? Well, I'm told it's great, but Music guys hear much more than I do. Like real, real music guys. They're like, can't you hear the difference? And I'm being, yeah, sort of, these music guys also El Niko speaker salesman. Yeah, probably so. All right, so let's get what, so this is what I like about this article. It goes like basic

to specific. Yes. And you can start with the basics about magnets. They attract specific metals. As we said, typically ferrous metals. Yes. They have a north and a south pole. All magnets do. There's no north and east pole magnet. Yeah.

And the earth is the biggest magnet of all, I guess. It is, at least on earth. Opposite poles attract one another. Like poles repel one another. They hate each other. That's right. Magnetic and electrical fields are related and we're going to explain why. I'm so excited. In magnetism, I think I said electromagnetism earlier, so you can put your email away because I'm correct in myself. Yes. Is one of the four fundamental forces of the universe, right? That's right.

With gravity and the strong and weak nuclear forces. That's right. That's magnets. That's a great intro. Magnets, the object itself, or a magnet, is an object in itself that produces a magnetic field and it's going to attract, like you said, ferrous metals. And there can be permanent magnets, aka hard magnets. And they always have a magnetic field going.

And then you have the temporary magnets, aka soft magnets. And they just produce a magnetic field when they're in the presence of a magnetic field, and only for a short time, and then for a little bit thereafter. Right. Like once it's calling. Yeah, and then electro magnets, when you apply an electrical current to some magnets, they become magnetic. That's right.

And if you have a doorbell, you probably have an electro magnet in your house. Yeah, the doorbell. Yeah. I looked it up. It's more complicated than you would think. Oh yeah. I don't have a doorbell.

It's like a Rubig Goldberg-esque contraption that is apparently pretty standard and uses electric magnets. Actually, if you're interested in that, there's an article on howdoorbellswork.com. Isn't it weird that a door, or maybe it's just me as a misenthrough, but the sound of a doorbell now is not like, oh, I wonder who's here. It's a crap who's here. Right. Because no one just drops by anymore.

Right. Either that or like they know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Chuck, the magnets that you typically have, like your pizza, pizza boy magnet, or like the circle ones are probably the best example, just a ring, that magnetic ring that you see, yeah, and grew up with. Those are specific types, and they're called ceramic magnets. That's right. And they're probably the weakest magnets commercially available, except for the pizza slice ones. Right. Because that's almost like a sticker.

Yeah, I mean, it's connected to, or it's got a, you know, a topper on it. Right. With printing. Yeah. A topper. That's the word I can find. The topper, the pizza slice topper. But with a ceramic magnet, it's magnetic material mixed with ceramics and it kind of cuts it.

And it makes it a little weak. Yeah, but good enough to stick on a fridge, which is all you're looking for. Yeah, and it's cheap, very cheap. You already mentioned the alnico magnets, which are more expensive. Like you said, aluminum, nickel, and cobalt, and they are stronger than ceramic, obviously, but not as strong as the ones we're about to talk about, like, neodymium magnets. Yeah, or a Samarium. Samarium. You've got to be kidding. Samarium. Okay, Samarium. Both of those magnets incorporate rare earth metals, which are extremely magnetic,

or when combining an alloy can be very magnetic. That's true. And now they even have, and this is something I never knew, they have a plastic magnet called magnetic polymers. And I guess those are for use in just very certain applications, like cold temperature applications. Yeah. Or maybe that's what's on your pizza slice magnet. Or it says they pick up very, only very lightweight things

like iron filling. So I wonder if that's what you use with like your You remember the little little toy kids thing where you could had a guy's face and Had the little iron fillings and you can move it around and make a beard or a stash or whatever. Sure I bet that's what that is. What was that call? I don't know old-timey toy number 273 not a etch a sketch not a Hugo No, old-timey toy number 273, not a etch-escage, not a Hugo, something like that. And why was it that anybody who had a beard from the 1940s to the 1960s, any child's toy, was like the most disturbing looking creature you could come up with. You think?

Oh, yeah. Have you ever heard of rushed-in dolls? No. They had, they were this very successful toy company, and they came out with a line of hobo dolls That were like the scariest things you've ever seen in your life Of course like they were meant to damage children obviously. Oh, I'll keep them from hopping trains probably I guess You know, yeah, play with it at home. This is what happens. Yeah, if you hop trains interesting Interesting. Let's see, oh, I made a blog post actually called 27 and the most unintentionally terrifying dolls you've ever seen or ever created. That's like almost every doll in my opinion.

You should see the slideshow, it's pretty good. I'll check it out. Okay, so let's talk about making magnets, chuckers. All right, well, you talked about load stone, form of magnetite, and that is the natural, strongest natural magnet. All right, you don't have to do anything to it. So I guess the discovery of load stone and the fact that it attracted metals made people

start to tinker around with it. And I guess around the 12th century people figured out that if you took a little iron pin and you took some load stone and you petted it in the same direction, preferably in a northern direction, you could magnetize that iron filling. And if you suspended it in something, like water and a leaf for anyone who's seen that movie with Alec Baldwin and Anthony Hopkins, the edge. Oh yeah, yeah.

They magnetized like a needle and put it in like a water-filled leaf and they figure out which way is north through that. I knew I had seen that before. So that's basically magnetizing a pin using load stone. That's how the earliest compasses were made. Very cool. So what's going on here? And this is sort of the basis, and we'll break it down to, like you said, a more molecular level.

But what's going on here is something known as a region called a magnetic domain. And it is actually part of the physical structure of any pharaoh magnetic material. So we're talking, again, iron, cobalt, and nickel, largely. And each one is like its own tiny little magnet right there. It's got its own little North Pole, its own little South Pole. And if it's un-magnetized, then this stuff is just gonna be random and pointing in all different directions. Right, the domain has its own North and South Pole,

but it's not necessarily aligned with the North and South Pole on Earth. Right, they're just kind of a skew. If it's magnetized, they're all pointing in the same direction. Right, yes, that's pretty much all you have to do is figure out how to get all of those magnetic domains to a line in the same north-south line. Yeah, because if they're not, they're just canceling each other out.

Exactly. So, the more domains that you have pointing in the same direction, the more powerful magnet you have. Yeah. And in each of these little domains, you can just kind of, I almost see it as like a little pocket in the molecular makeup of this, like an iron. Yeah. The north pole of one domain flows into the south pole of the domain in front of it, that's right.

If they're all aligned. And you add a bunch of these up, they produce one large magnetic field for the magnet as a whole, right? Yeah, which explains why if you, you know, if you do the old trick in elementary school or you bring one magnet close to the other, one it'll either repel it or, you know, snap it together like one larger magnet.

Right, because the force, this magnetic force, is going into, out of the north pole of the magnet and into the South Pole of the magnet in front of it. There's something very dirty about that. It is, right. Or if you take the North Pole of one magnet, North Pole of another magnet and put them together, they were pole on another because their magnetic forces are flowing in opposite directions and pushing on another part. Which is kind of funny because this is how magnets work, but it bears such a striking resemblance to like something they would have come up with

in the 15th century, like the force flowing out. Yeah, this invisible force. Right, it's witchery. And this is why magnets won't be brought together. Like people would come and drag its out of here and toss us in a lake to see if we float at the bird. So we could stop there and you would have a pretty good idea of things, but we won't. No, we'll continue on.

Okay, we'll go a little more in detail, huh? That's right. If you want to make a magnet, you have to get all these magnetic domains flowing in the same direction. Just like we were talking about earlier, when you rub the needle on the magnet, you expose it to this magnetic field and we've gotten these suckers to align in the same way, and then boom, that is one way that you can get a magnet. Right, and there's different ways of doing this. Place it in a magnetic field in the north-south direction.

You can hold it in the north-south direction and hit it with the hammer. Yeah, that's crazy. It is a little crazy. You're physically jarring these domains into alignment. They're like huh? Yeah. Okay, I'll point this way then. Or you can pass an electrical current through it. That's kind of a cheat. And they think that this is where load stone came from. Either it was when this rock formed, the magnetite formed from a lava, it was aligned with the north-south pole of the earth, so it became magnetized. Yeah.

Or it was struck by lightning, so an electrical current passed through it. That'd be pretty cool. And it became magnetized as a result. And that seems likely. Right. But today, the most common method of making magnets is to place them in a very strong magnetic field. But a boom-batter being their domain start to wind up. But there's going to be a little delay, though.

Yeah. And I saw this on a YouTube video. There's a really good one. I can't remember what it was called, or the guy broke it down. Whenever it's stuff, I don't understand. I always type kid science. Then I look and see what videos are available. Yeah, yeah, no, it's good.

It really helps out. But there will be a delay called hysteresis, or hysteresis. And that's basically just the time it takes for the field to change direction and all align itself. Right. Because when you get these domains going, the ones that aren't already lined up on a North South pole, they just rotate around and do a little crazy spinning until they land on it. Right. And the ones that are already aligned North South are, they grow

bigger. Yeah, become more robust, I guess. Yeah. And as a result, other ones, the walls between smaller domains will shrink, and so you have large north-south domains, and then even the smaller ones are now probably polarized along that north-south line. And you have just created a magnet. Yeah, and here's what I think was one of the really cooler aspects of this is how strong your magnet is depends on how hard it was to get these domains to move in that direction. And the harder it is, the longer it will stay magnetized, which sort of makes sense.

It's almost like that. It was so stubborn to get going, but then once you got it going in the right direction, it was then stubborn undoing it that action. Right. and the right direction, it was then stubborn undoing it at that action. Right, which kind of makes you wonder, like, if over enough of a time span, well, any magnetized material eventually lose its magnetism. Oh, it just left alone.

Yeah. Huh. That's a good question. There are things you can do to demagnetize things. You could take a magnet and put it in a magnetic field that's polarized the opposite direction. Yeah, it's going to mean. Yeah, you can boil it alive, which is also very mean, and heat it to the point where it loses its magnetism. Yeah, the Curie point, the guy in the video

tested this. He had a paperclip on a string tied to the table, and then the magnet was like a foot off so it was just like and then he took a... Was it a Jerry Lewis? Then he said, Dean, bring me a lighter. And he got a lighter and heated up the paperclip and then you see it start to shake and then eventually it just poop fell. That is a weird story. He demagnetized it. Yeah, he did. Using the curie point. That is a weird story. Yeah. He demagnetized it. Yeah, he did.

Using the curie point. So, okay. Again, we could stop here. I think everybody understands how magnets work, right? Like, there's little magnetic domains that are in all kinds of crazy directions. And then when you expose them to a magnetic field, they line up together and they produce their own magnetic field around that magnetic material. And then there you go.

It flows out of the north and into the south, magnets, right? I would like to see a survey. I wish you could take an instant survey of people that, you know, half of them are going, go, go, go. And half of them are like, I'm good. Right. That's all I need to know about magnets. Right. You know, I think our listeners are like, I'm good. Right. That's all I need to know about magnets. Right.

I think our listeners are pretty curious folk. Okay, so we're going deeper and Tracy Wilson, who our site manager here, of stuff you miss in history class now. Yeah. She wrote this one and she's so thorough. She has a very nice little pun in this section called shipping magnets.

Get it? Oh, shipping magnet? Yeah, I got it now. I didn't notice that before. Yeah, it's a pun. What she's talking about in this section, though, is interesting in that very large magnets present a lot of problems because they're super strong

and you can't just throw it on a truck and drive it across country. It'll disrupt everything. So very specific precautions have to be taken when delivering large magnets used for certain industrial applications. One of which is they have machines that, because it'll pick up all this ferrous material along the way, they have machines when they get there to remove all that stuff.

I mean, imagine if you're shipping it in like a truck and the truck is made of, or has some sort of iron alloy in it. Yeah. And you have a huge industrial magnet. How are you going to get that off of the truck? You're not. Exactly. So they magnetize these materials on site, typically, right? Oh, is that what they do? That's what I understand. Or else they just rely almost exclusively on electromagnets, which become magnetic when you pass a current through. Other you can say manpower. Right. It's like giving those 10-guys. American ingenuity, that's how you do it. Pull! It's stuck sir. Right. Well speaking of sticking, we're gonna break it down to the electrons which...

The atomic level. This is bound to happen. Yeah. Because that's really where it all starts. Well, I was just saying like electromagnetic, they become magnetic when you pass a field of electricity through them, or current. And all electrical current is a flow of electrons. Movement of electrons produces electricity. And electricity and magnetism are very much related. And this is why, because on the atomic level

of a ferrous material, iron, nickel, cobalt, right? Yes, they're the big ones. Let's call it the big three. Well, let's talk specifically about iron. Okay. In an iron atom, there are around its orbit, in its orbit, there are electrons moving around. Yeah, they spend downward or upward.

And typically they're paired. And when you have a pair of electrons, one spinning upward, one spinning downward, there's never any other way. There's no pair of electrons that both spin in the same direction. It's always opposite. Yeah, that's called the poly exclusion principle. Yeah. It's just not possible. Right, exactly.

So in iron, you also have four unpaired electrons that all spin the same way. Now, those ones that are paired and spinning the opposite direction, they cancel one another out. Yeah. But these four spinning the same way produce a magnetic field, a very, very, very, very tiny magnetic field, but a magnetic field nonetheless. Yeah. Right? And this is very unusual for these unpaired electrons to be spinning in the same direction. That's why it only happens in things like iron, cobalt, and nickel. Right, exactly.

That's what makes them ferromagnetic materials. Yeah. Potentially magnetic because they have these unpaired electrons that are spinning in a certain direction, right? That's right. And then because these things are spinning in the same direction, they attract other atoms to kind of line up that are spinning in the same direction to line up nearby. And then those create what domains?

Well, what a moment, they have a moment. Oh yeah, I forgot the moment. It's called the orbital magnetic moment. And I get it, maybe that's just when they realize, hey, we're all partying in the same way, we're all spinning downward. Right. And we all like slacks. Yeah, and hey, we've got a magnetic field, all of a sudden.

Yeah. Small, but let's get a bunch of other ones and let's create a larger one. Right, and that moment is, it describes the force, I guess the power and the direction of the spin. Yeah. So yeah, when you have a bunch of them having the same moment, they kind of line up around one another

when iron forms. That's right. And then that causes the domain, or that creates the little magnetic domains in the material. That's right. And if you notice that materials that make good magnets are the same materials that magnets attract, then

it's because they attract unpaired electrons that are spinning in that direction. It's the same thing. And you can also have something called diamagnetic, which are unpaired electrons creating a field that repels instead of attracts. And then some materials don't react at all with magnets. Like pine straw. I think now is the time for a word from our sponsor. Alright, back to magnets, because they're still some more to go. I mean, now everyone who's listening to this understands magnets on an atomic level. It's the spin of electrons. It's physics.

Yeah. My favorite thing. Yeah. This one actually appealed to me more than usual. Yeah, physics. Why is it same here? You know, remember the physics of surfing? I do. All right, so people measure magnets to see, you know, how strong a magnetic field is using something called a goss meter. Yeah. And the Goss meter and flux or webers are the, what would you call that? Well, you measure flux in webers. Oh, okay. So flux is the line of magnetic force coming out of it. Well, I bought that. That's all right.

Okay. So the density of the flux is measured in either Tesla or Goss with Tesla being 10,000 Goss, which is pretty cool that you get a unit of measurement named after you. Oh yeah. If you're Tesla. You better if you're Tesla. Sure. You've got a lot of cool stuff. And you can also measure it in Weber's per square meter. But really, who wants to do that? Yeah. You know? Canada, probably. And then the magnitude of the field is measured in amperes per meter or something called orsted. Yeah, I like orsted. You know, I'm a fan of orsted and I also like flux and Tesla's pretty awesome too. So where do we use magnets besides pizza reminders or doorbells or doorbells or of course speakers.

We use them to if if you were into cassette tapes back in the day, brother, you were into magnets. Yeah, yeah. We also use them again in compasses, burglar alarms, electric motors, we use them to provide torque. Yeah, car speedometers. If you have an old-fashioned cathode-ray tube television set, you're using magnets.

Yep. Did you listen to cassettes? What? Sure, man, I grew up in the 80s. Okay, I was just, I wasn't quite sure, you know, you're a little younger, but I didn't know. I was a later doctor. Oh, oh, for cassettes?

Well, no, of everything, because what I would do is I would have a big collection and then be like, ah, I got all these records. Right. So I was late to cassettes and then I had all these cassettes. I didn't want to switch to CDs until all my cassettes got stolen. Oh yeah. And then I was like, all right, I guess I all these cassettes. I didn't want to switch to CDs. Yeah. Until all my cassettes got stolen. Oh yeah. And then I was like, all right, I guess I'll get CDs now. Get some going CDs. Yeah.

Yeah, no, I was there for the big transition from cassettes to CDs. Sure. Remember, like they were across the board, $20, 1999 for CDs. In the big box, do you remember? What a waste. See, look at that. Maglev trains? Yeah, we talked about this.

We have a cool one of our little one minute live action shorts online. We, we, maybe I'll post this when we release this, but the Maglev train system and a lot of roller coasters and things like that use super magnets to. I don't remember that one. Yeah, the Maglev train uses it to propel the train forward. Yeah. And roller coasters use magnets for breaking a lot that one. Yeah, the Maglev train uses it to propel the train forward. Yeah. And the roller coasters use magnets for breaking a lot of times.

Oh, yeah. Like new ones. Yeah. The good ones. You don't remember that one? No. We did like a dozen of them in four days. Okay.

I don't remember that one. I'll send it to you. The thank you. The magnetosphere is a part of our atmosphere. I guess it's outside of the atmosphere, but it surrounds Earth in a protective layer that protects it from charged ions known as solar winds. And when these solar winds come in contact with the magnetosphere, you get something that's called the northern or southern lights. Oh, that's what that is. I know we talked about that at some point.

And another short. that's right. Yeah. And then our favorite, of course, the wonder machine would not be possible without magnets because it is magnetic resonance imaging. Right, you know? And it just be resonance imaging without it. Yeah, and there's no fun in that. And then doctors sometimes use pulse electromagnetic fields to actually heal broken bones that haven't healed correctly.

It's amazing. I looked into this. They have no idea how it works on a molecular level. Oh, really? All they know is that if you expose bone or tissue, I think bones more, more bone and muscle maybe are easier to grow. To an electromagnetic pulse, it grows, even if it like it hasn't healed under after surgery or any other procedure.

If you hit it with an electromagnetic pulse, it'll, you'll get a reaction. And they're figuring out how to put this in garments for astronauts. Oh, right. Yeah, because you have, you suffer substantial bone loss on a very long microgravity flight. So they're figuring out how to weave it into their clothes. So their clothes can blast them with an electromagnetic pulse to make sure their bone density keeps up. Wow.

Yeah. That's pretty cool. But they don't know why it works. They just know it works. Cows are pretty happy they're magnets. Because there's this horrific thing called traumatic. You know, we'll just call it hardware disease And this is when when cows eat small metal objects that are in their food And it's pretty awful that that happens, but luckily they have a cow magnet to feed them and

It I guess gathers up all this stuff and then they poop it out They I'll bet that's horrible to poop out. Isn't that what happens? Or it punctures, oh the magnet? Yeah, I mean they poop it out, right? Do they poop the magnet out? I don't know, wait it does. It surely does, and just stay in the body, does it?

I don't know. All right, I'm gonna have to look into that some more. And people are known to put their arms into cows' rears. Yeah, no, we, some of them have a hole cut in their side remember so they can examine their stomach. Yeah, they want the poor hole Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool. I'm gonna try this one Traumatic reticulo pericarditis need practice that beforehand Well done, so it's nothing wrong with that. Yeah, some people might think Practicing hard words before you do a professionally released audio programs. All right, good thing

hard words before you do a professionally released audio program. All right. Good thing. If a human swallow is a magnet, that's not good. Yeah, you don't want to do that. Cows and testants and stomachs are different than humans and testants and stomachs. And if we swallow, especially more than one magnet, they will basically clamp your entrails together and you will be in big trouble and you'll have to undergo surgery to have them removed. Yeah, so that's no good. Parents be cautioned to when your kids are playing with magnets because kids like to swallow things, they shouldn't swallow. Yeah. And since we talked about a electromagnetic

pulses being capable of spurring bone loss, is it spurring or scroting? Or burning bone loss, spurring bone growth. Thank you. You would think that people wearing magnetic bracelets or magnetic insoles are getting some sort of benefit. There's no study that's ever shown that those things actually help. Although there's a lot of people out there who believe in static magnetic therapy, which is just a magnet on your skin.

There's no pulse or anything going off. And they think that possibly the people who are adherents to this think that it's either attracting iron and the hemoglobin, that kind of makes sense. So it improves circulation. Or it has some sort of effect on the cellular structure in the body. Right.

And that's why it helps your back in souls, help your back or a bracelet. Helps your arthritis. Yeah. But again, there's no studies that suggest this. Well, it's big money. Americans alone spend about 500 million per year on this kind of thing. And worldwide, about $5 billion a year on magnetic treatments. With a B. Yeah, that's a lot of dough. It is. And then there was one more thing. Magnetized drinking water is a thing now to treat ailments. And I think that they have not shown inclinical trials

that that's been proven either. Most of the minerals in drinking water are not ferromagnetic. So it wouldn't have anything to do with it. And they found that in clinical trials a lot of the positive benefits come from placebo maybe or a passage of time, or maybe the fact that these in-sold cushionings are just better made and more padded to begin with. There's also apparently a device that removes hard water, minerals from water,

using magnets, but apparently, again, it's not really doing anything as far as consumer reports as in a two year study. Yeah, we had a water softener when I lived in Yuma. Yeah. And I'd never heard of that. I was like, what? And it's like, you know, it was in the garage.

It sort of looked like a hot water heater. And it's off in the water, whatever that means. Yeah, do you know what it did? It's off in the water. But I think I remember asking my sister what hard water did and she was like, oh, you could tell the difference. I can't remember. It's just like, I can't remember.

It's just like, I can't remember. I think, yeah, I don't remember. Yeah. So that's hard water, everyone. If you want to learn more about that, of word magnets into the search bar at House of Words.com It will bring up this awesome and exhaustive article Also if you're interested in doorbells type that word in the search bar too and since I said search bar twice It means we go straight to listen or mail

Yeah, I'm gonna call call this military shout out. We don't do shout outs that often. Sometimes we do. We get a lot of requests. I don't feel bad people if we don't do your shout out. This is from Trevor. Hey guys, my name is Trevor. And yes, that is spelled with a B and not a V.

And that is a long story that I'll tell you you would like, but that's not why I'm writing in. I am currently serving in the US Armed Forces and I am in station overseas. My wife and I recently welcomed my daughter into the world. Congratulations Trevor and wife and I got to spend some time with them although not as much as I would like to obviously before I had to come back overseas. It's been a really long tough trip being away from them and even harder on our marriage. I work long hours and when I come home to talk to my wife I really dread talking about work and she really

hates talking about herself all the time. So that's when I bring up topics that you guys talk about on the show. I've listened for years and I have turned her onto them as well. And I just want to thank you guys and ask if you could give a shout out to her in listener mail. Her name is Tony, and I. So Treber and Tony, Treber, thanks for your service, obviously. And both of you, thanks for hanging in there as a military couple. It's tough. When you're away for that long, and it's quite a sacrifice.

My sister and her husband, he's a career marine helicopter pilot, as I mentioned before. Yeah, he's been to Afghanistan, right? Yeah, and they go for long tours, six and eight months at a time and you do enough of those in your life and you realize you're spending years away from your husband or wife, totaled up. And family and daughters and sons. And so it's tough stuff.

So shout out to you guys, hanging there. Yeah, thanks, Trebor and Tony. That's pretty awesome that we're keeping their marriage happy. Well, we're providing an obsessedness to talk about. It's awesome. Exactly. If you want to let us know how we have helped your marriage, we're very interested in that.

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