if you put 2 magnets together, is it twice as strong?

[rogerxd45]

ok first sorry if ithis is in the wrong section

 

but my question is if you take two permanent magnets (in this case its the "rare earth" type) and stick them together does their magnetic field double?

or is it like 1.5 times as strong

or is it exponential

[swansont]

It depends on how you stick them together.

[ecoli]

It depends on how you stick them together.

 

with glue or tape.

[rogerxd45]

ok well if you stick the opposites together just like they will do naturally,

 

and as far as magnet style lets say its a bar magnet and the largest face is the pole and its connected by that same large face

[Sisyphus]

Pretty sure you can just add the fields together. That would make it less than double the strength, because a point at the surface of the nearer magnet would be a magnet's-width distant from the far magnet.

 

This is something that it would be pretty easy to test, though, at least crudely, by for example seeing how much weight they can support.

[rogerxd45]

Pretty sure you can just add the fields together. That would make it less than double the strength, because a point at the surface of the nearer magnet would be a magnet's-width distant from the far magnet.

 

This is something that it would be pretty easy to test, though, at least crudely, by for example seeing how much weight they can support.

 

that makes sense and thats what i was guessing would happen

 

and i will do the test once i get enough iron filings, these magnets are very strong so it takes a lot of iron to "max out" the magnet

[swansont]

Pretty sure you can just add the fields together. That would make it less than double the strength, because a point at the surface of the nearer magnet would be a magnet's-width distant from the far magnet.

 

This is something that it would be pretty easy to test, though, at least crudely, by for example seeing how much weight they can support.

 

I did a quick empirical test, and one magnet lifted a paper clip when it got within ~ 1 cm. Two magnets joined either side-by-side or end-to-end lifted it at about 2 cm — no difference at this crude level of experimentation. Which is not what I was expecting, but nature gets the final say.

[sr.vinay]

If the strengths of magnets you are joining is the same, then the power will not double. It's because it'll just act as one big magnet. The power will increase in a ratio with which the size increases. If the powers are different, even then joining won't double directly, but increase with certain ratios.

[mannzzu]

yeah if both magnets are exactly similar then strength should not increase acc to my expectation!! because joining increases only the path of magnetic field in the magnet the field from one just takes longer path to other face of another magnet.(here we do need to consider the fields as magneton's instead of imaginary lines)

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Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

yeah if both magnets are exactly similar then strength should not increase acc to my expectation!! because joining increases only the path of magnetic field in the magnet the field from one just takes longer path to other face of another magnet.(here we do need to consider the fields as magneton's instead of imaginary lines)

[sr.vinay]

There are more number of magnetons as you put two magnets together. This means that there is more density of entities that cause magnetism. This does increase the power. But, not double it, so as to say.

[khaled]

notice that when you stick these two magnets together,

 

each magnet is in the other one's field,

 

it means that each one charges the other one partially,

 

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Edited April 23, 2010 by khaled