Naked Science Forum

Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: PmbPhy on 13/01/2015 04:14:22

Title: North and South Poles of a Bar Magnet
Post by: PmbPhy on 13/01/2015 04:14:22
Hi folks. In another thread in this forum, one of the members is referring to north and south poles of magnets as positive and negative poles. There's no reason not to other than convention. I did a search and only found rare instances of that usage. It wasn't found in Wikipedia.

Who here calls the North and South poles of a bar magnetic positive and negative?

Thank you.

How would I make a thread into a pole?
Title: Re: North and South Poles of a Bar Magnet
Post by: JohnDuffield on 14/01/2015 10:08:11
Not me. I even think positive and negative charge is a misnomer. The positron and electron have different chiralities, that's all. Chirality (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality) is "handedness", and can be related to knots. If you tied one shoelace left-over-right and the other one right-over-left, you wouldn't think one was a positive knot and the other was a negative knot. And what's a magnet? It's just a lump of metal where all the electron spins are aligned, that's all. The North Pole of a magnet is no more positive than the Arctic.