Posts Tagged ‘magnets’

Fun with Magnets

Monday, October 10th, 2016

fun-with-magnets

Today we will have fun with magnets! We will see various objects picked up by magnets, including strings of paper clips. Rocks and minerals will be explored, as to whether they are magnetic. We will also be playing with iron filings.

Magnets have a north and south pole. Opposite poles attract (north/south), and like poles repel or push away from each other (north/north or south/south).

Pull together some objects to see whether a magnet will pick them up. Some might surprise you, like coins seem like they ought to be picked up, but they don’t have enough metal in them to be attracted to a magnet!

what-does-a-magnet-pick-upThis post contains affiliate links. I was compensated for my work in writing this post.

These are some of the objects that we attempted to pick up with the magnet: a nail, a toothpick, a paper cup, a penny, a nickel, brass thumb tacks, a paper clip, and a potato chip.

magnet-with-tacks

The brass thumb tacks were my favorite of the whole list of picked-up things because so many clung to the magnet! I also liked the fact that a long string of paper clips were picked up by a magnet as well.

Take a look at this experiment, which includes rocks and minerals and iron filings:

We dumped little odds and ends from a junk drawer into a bowl to see what we could pick up with a magnet. We noticed that the following things remained in the bowl and are therefore non-magnetic: plastic, wood, ceramic, buttons, and other synthetic items.

magnetism-junk

Here is the chart we filled in from Christian Kids Explore Physics by Bright Ideas Press. We were encouraged to think about why certain materials were picked up by a magnet and others not. Metal was the underlying reason why items were picked up because metal conducts electricity.

fun-with-magnets-chart

I hope you enjoyed all of our fun with magnets!

Bottle Cap Art

Thursday, May 31st, 2012

bottle-cap-art

A fun craft activity for kids is to make fridge magnets out of bottle caps. If you don’t have any bottle caps lying around, you can go to the grocery store and find drinks with bottle caps, and buy the drinks. Then cut small circles of paper that would fit into the bottle cap. We used markers to decorate the papers. You can glue the small circles of paper onto bottle caps with white school glue. Then put strips of magnet on the back. If you want all the materials in one place, you can get a bottle cap art kit. The circle papers are stickers, which makes it easier for the kids to stick on after they’ve drawn their picture. My kids enjoyed making these fridge magnets.