[WellRoundedIndividual]

In short, yes. I took my oldest son a year and a half ago to a science exhibit that had an interactive* exhibit on magnets and it had....drum roll...iron filings. Do I win a prize? 

Ok, I've gotten to the point where I am going to go out and by my own magnets and do some experiments to show to you what I mean instead of pretty little diagrams that don't seem to get my point across to you. Give me some time and I will have it all ready for your viewing pleasure. But in the meantime, here is the diagram I drew last night showing the difference between radial and axial.

*edit

I have also attached a diagram of the set up of my experiment to end this debate.  I will take two pieces of lexan that have slots milled into them at a certain depth to hold 12 bar magnets that are radially positioned as the hour marks on a clock. The lengths of the slot will be a certain length (not determined yet) that is longer than the length of the bar magnet. The bottom piece of lexan will have a hole drilled in the center, as well as the bar magnets having a hole drilled in the same end (same pole) of each.  A string will be attached to each bar magnet and pulled through the hole in the lexan. The top piece of lexan will have slots milled in at the same depth and length as the bottom piece. A number of screws will hold the top and bottom pieces of lexan together loosely to allow the bar magnets to slide.  Once assembled, I will drop iron filings or some other magnetic material that is available to me and I will record the movements of the magnetic field lines as I pull the bar magnets towards the center of the lexan.  This will approximate what will happen when the same pole of each magnet approaches a convergence, and approximate what happens with a radially oriented magnet.

[TomFoolery]

In short, yes. I took my oldest son a year and a half ago to a science exhibit that had an interactive* exhibit on magnets and it had....drum roll...iron filings. Do I win a prize? 

AHH WONDERFUL! I've been debating magnetics with someone who last experimented with iron filings a year and a half ago - at a science fair for kids - and who doesn't even have in his possession iron filings!
Look, a huge number of ordinary folks with kids have probably seen magnetism displays at science events.
And all this time you've been passing yourself off as one with significant expertise in the field! 

I guess that explains why you made so many claims which I then proved were wrong.

Ok, I've gotten to the point where I am going to go out and by my own magnets and do some experiments to show to you what I mean instead of pretty little diagrams that don't seem to get my point across to you. Give me some time and I will have it all ready for your viewing pleasure. But in the meantime, here is the diagram I drew last night showing the difference between radial and axial.

*edit

I have also attached a diagram of the set up of my experiment to end this debate.  I will take two pieces of lexan that have slots milled into them at a certain depth to hold 12 bar magnets that are radially positioned as the hour marks on a clock. The lengths of the slot will be a certain length (not determined yet) that is longer than the length of the bar magnet. The bottom piece of lexan will have a hole drilled in the center, as well as the bar magnets having a hole drilled in the same end (same pole) of each.  A string will be attached to each bar magnet and pulled through the hole in the lexan. The top piece of lexan will have slots milled in at the same depth and length as the bottom piece. A number of screws will hold the top and bottom pieces of lexan together loosely to allow the bar magnets to slide.  Once assembled, I will drop iron filings or some other magnetic material that is available to me and I will record the movements of the magnetic field lines as I pull the bar magnets towards the center of the lexan.  This will approximate what will happen when the same pole of each magnet approaches a convergence, and approximate what happens with a radially oriented magnet.

Most excellent. I cannot wait to see what you come up with.

What exactly is your magnet clock thing gonna prove? that a radial magnet cannot exist? or that my magnet is not radial?

Thanks! I really appreciate others doing a little hands on investigation too!

[WellRoundedIndividual]

I really do not appreciate that comment. I guess it was my fault for falling into that trap of a question. I have not besmirched or denigrated you. I didn't make fun of you when you said you don't have your GED or high school diploma. I have worked with plenty of people in my career who do not have a college education and I respect them.

However, you are starting to cross the line here. I have answered all of your questions and you continue to criticize and attack me and corner me contextually and warp my words. The closest thing I have done is to call you out on some disingenuous posts. If you were so hurt by them you would have reported them, or one of the moderators would have already called me out.

Is there a point to asking me when I last handled a magnet? That is simply a straw man argument that falls away completely. I do not have to have had any direct handling of magnets within a certain time period to retain my knowledge that I have gained through prior experimentation and study. Is it a refresher? Sure. But I do not lack knowledge in this area.

Its like saying Michael Jordan can no longer play basketball since he no longer plays in the NBA. (Me being Michael Jordan, and you some punk ass kid who thinks he can take me on because has some fancy moves he learned at an And1 camp).

Watch, I will probably get a warning or a ban for this post. But hey, I am about tired of this crap from you.


Anyways back to it. To answer your last two questions - yes (in the form of a convergence), and yes.

[TomFoolery]

I really do not appreciate that comment.

I really did not appreciate all the times you accused me of being intentionally disingenuous, with no proof and no apology when I showed you I was being genuine.

I guess it was my fault for falling into that trap of a question.

It wasn't a trap of a question. You were presenting yourself as one with significant expertise in magnets, and I was puzzled because of your obvious lack of understanding about them, I was trying to figure out why somebody with such experience in magnets would make such odd statements as you did. Now I know why. And in fact, this is often the case when someone cites their expertise on the topic rather than using their understanding of the topic to prove their point.

There's no shame in not having experimented with iron filings and magnets, but to present yourself as one with expertise on the topic when you haven't done so may not have been a successful approach in  convincing us that you know what you're talking about, or that we should regard you as an expert. (i.e. one with expertise.)

If you feel like you slid into a pit, you dug it yourself, not me.

I have not besmirched or denigrated you.

Except the multiple times you told me I was being intentionally disingenuous without any proof whatsoever, and nary an apology?
I double checked the definition for "besmirched" and it basically means to say bad things about someone to influence other people's opinion of them.
And telling everyone that I was being intentionally disingenuous doesn't influence other people's opinion of me? Well, maybe not coming from you 
I also looked up denigrated. It means along the lines of to criticize unfairly; disparage, or an attempt to blacken someone's reputation.
And are you saying accusing me of being  intentionally disingenuous doesn't denigrate me?

I mean, look, it's one thing if you believe I'm wrong in my belief, I don't have any problem with you telling me you believe I'm wrong.  But that's not what you told me - you said I was being  intentionally disingenuous!
To honestly accuse me of that you would have to know my intentions and be able to prove to others that they were in fact disingenuous, which you never did!

So when you say that you never besmirched or denigrated me it's a lie, plain and simple.

I didn't make fun of you when you said you don't have your GED or high school diploma. I have worked with plenty of people in my career who do not have a college education and I respect them.


However, you are starting to cross the line here.

If there were lines here, you already crossed them all. You accused me multiple times of being intentionally disingenuous with no proof whatsoever, and never an apology.
You made multiple claims about magnetism which I then proved wrong. If there are lines here and you didn't cross them already, you must be bringing them with you 

I was never offended that you believed I was wrong about my understanding of magnets. That's why I didn't call you names, I just built models to show you that I had come by my beliefs honestly.

I have answered all of your questions and you continue to criticize and attack me and corner me contextually and warp my words. The closest thing I have done is to call you out on some disingenuous posts. If you were so hurt by them you would have reported them, or one of the moderators would have already called me out.

I don't have to tell a moderator just because you accused me of being intentionally disingenuous. I know I wasn't, and I demonstrated that I have been perfectly genuine about my understanding of magnetism.
Why bother the moderators? We're grown ups. Or at least I'm working on it. For years I wondered what I wanted to be when I grew up, then one day I decided I should just work at growing up. 

But seriously, I know I wasn't being intentionally disingenuous. You saying that something is so doesn't make it so. I've been in enough discussions to know that some people just throw out accusations of their opponent being intentionally disingenuous in an attempt to win an argument they are losing so it's nothing new to me.

Is there a point to asking me when I last handled a magnet?

Absolutely! It just so happens we were talking about magnets, and how iron filings behave on them, and the different shapes magnets can be formed in.
Iron filings help us see how a magnet is formed.
The statements you were making suggested to me that you had in fact much less knowledge of magnets than you were claiming.
I was trying to understand how this guy who worked with magnets every day and knew so much about them seemed to know so little.
If we were talking about riding a bicycle and I was giving you advice, wouldn't you want to know if I'd ever ridden one?
If we were talking about flying airplanes, and I was giving you advice, wouldn't you want to know if I'd ever flown one?
Maybe you wouldn't.
But when someone is telling me things that seem to contradict my own experience, I do naturally want to know what experiences they are drawing their statements from.

That is simply a straw man argument that falls away completely.

My question about when you last experimented with iron filings on a magnet was not an argument. It was my attempts to understand what was going on here.

I do not have to have had any direct handling of magnets within a certain time period to retain my knowledge that I have gained through prior experimentation and study. Is it a refresher? Sure.

Wow, super-brain-man. Everyone forgets things with time.

But I do not lack knowledge in this area.

I don't know what to say about that. You claimed it was impossible to have a radially oriented magnetic field on the surface of the earth, which I proved wrong.
You claimed a 3 poled magnet could not exist. which I proved wrong.
You even admitted the following in another thread:

<snip>
And maybe my full understanding of Gauss's Law of Magnetism is flawed and what you say is correct. I can not at this point neither confirm nor deny that.

Even if someone I never talked with claims that they do not lack knowledge in a given area, I'd be suspicious. Everyone lacks some knowledge, unless they are a perfect know-it-all.

Can you see why I am having a difficulty with your claim of not lacking knowledge on the topic, especially after all the mistaken beliefs you started out with?

Its like saying Michael Jordan can no longer play basketball since he no longer plays in the NBA. (Me being Michael Jordan, and you some punk ass kid who thinks he can take me on because has some fancy moves he learned at an And1 camp).

Watch, I will probably get a warning or a ban for this post.

I hope not. Active intelligent globers are just about as scarce as that kind of flatter.

But hey, I am about tired of this crap from you.

I guess that's how the internet works 

Asked Tom Foolery: What exactly is your magnet clock thing gonna prove? that a radial magnet cannot exist? or that my magnet is not radial?

Anyways back to it. To answer your last two questions - yes (in the form of a convergence), and yes.

Most excellent! I look forward to the results!

Some suggestions, if you use neodymium magnets, you may not want to drill holes in them, but you can buy just the shape you need from K&J with the holes already in them.
Or if you're concerned the holes will upset your experiment, use ones without holes and just put a zip tie around the outside of the magnets to force them all together.
Also, instead of using lose screws to hold the two plates, you probably want to use tight screws with standoffs so the two lexan plates are ridged.
Remember, with all those magnets pressing apart from eachother, there are going to be some funny forces on the plates, and things might bind up.

[WellRoundedIndividual]

Read my statements carefully. I said MAYBE my full understanding is flawed. I did not say wrong.

And you have not proven me wrong about a radially oriented or 3 poles magnet. You have just given your observations. I said there was more at play here that required a deeper analysis with equipment that neither of us have at hand. I will attempt to show you what I mean by the lexan bar magnet demonstration.

You refusing to understand how radially oriented field lines cannot exist and you labeling something as radially oriented field lines does not mean it is radially oriented. For one, i have given you lots of evidence as to what is actually meant by radially oriented,yet you refuse to accept or even acknowledge it.

Also, the fact that you baited me with a question and continue to use backhanded comments about my intelligence is just another piece of evidence of how you operate.

[TomFoolery]

Read my statements carefully. I said MAYBE my full understanding is flawed. I did not say wrong.

And you have not proven me wrong about a radially oriented or 3 poles magnet. You have just given your observations. I said there was more at play here that required a deeper analysis with equipment that neither of us have at hand. I will attempt to show you what I mean by the lexan bar magnet demonstration.

You refusing to understand how radially oriented field lines cannot exist and you labeling something as radially oriented field lines does not mean it is radially oriented. For one, i have given you lots of evidence as to what is actually meant by radially oriented,yet you refuse to accept or even acknowledge it.

Also, the fact that you baited me with a question and continue to use backhanded comments about my intelligence is just another piece of evidence of how you operate.

Yeah first you said maybe your understanding was lacking, then you said you do not lack knowledge in this area.
Well which is it? "Maybe lacking" and "not lacking" are not the same thing.  You said both.
And please don't tell me that my experimental evidence didn't surprise you. I could tell by your reaction.
When I first asked you about a 3-pole magnet you didn't say "Well you can make one but even though it is indistinguishable from a 3 poled magnet it's actually not one."
You said "Impossible." So then I made what sure appears to be one, then you changed your tone to "Well it's not what it looks like." yeah OK.

And I didn't bait you with the question about when you last actually experimented with a magnet and iron filings.

You said a that lot of your actual job is troubleshooting faulty equipment.

You're a troubleshooter, and so am I.

When you're troubleshooting a faulty equipment, you're actually troubleshooting 3 things, all at once: The equipment, your test tools, and the equipment's operator 
Any one of the 3 could be feeding you bad information.
Maybe the operator didn't want you to know he busted it so he didn't recount the failure exactly accurately. Or maybe he just assumed something happened that didn't.
Or it might be you stick your volt meter on something, and get a reading you simply cannot believe, so then you're questioning your volt meter.

Ultimately, what you are trying to achieve is a state where the operator, the volt meter, and the machine all are telling you the same thing, then you can move onto the next step.

So part my troubleshooting technique included trying to get agreement between what I was observing and what you were saying and what magnetic theory states.
Things weren't adding up.
The fact that I had to ask the questions 3 times before you answered it tells me you already believed that you were overstating your grasp on the topic and that maybe you shouldn't have claimed to work with magnets every day.
By the way, you said that you worked with magnets every day, and I would love to know exactly what that means. You use equipment which uses magnets every day? you handle bare magnets every day?

So no sir, I did not bait you with any question. You knew the importance of the question the moment I asked it the first time, and it was perfectly relevant.

And I never said anything negative about your intellegence. All I said about intelligence was that  we need intelligent people around here like you because there aren't many. I hope you didn't take that any other way.

There's nothing wrong with your intelligence, there's just some areas lacking in your knowledge -- but that's true for everybody!
And we're remedying it.

Having said all that, I really look forward to your magnet experiment!

[WellRoundedIndividual]

I ordered 12 bar magnets today. And a container of iron filings. Since I don't have a workshop of my own with a router or CNC that can run an end mill, I will be purchasing some lexan and having a buddy of mine at work do some..."government work" to mill the slots and holes in the lexan. So this little endeavor will not be as quick as yours.

[TomFoolery]

I ordered 12 bar magnets today. And a container of iron filings. Since I don't have a workshop of my own with a router or CNC that can run an end mill, I will be purchasing some lexan and having a buddy of mine at work do some..."government work" to mill the slots and holes in the lexan. So this little endeavor will not be as quick as yours.

Wonderful, I'll be patient. My attempts to disprove gravity have not been going well, but they have been keeping my busy. Latest video here: https://forum.tfes.org/index.php?topic=13661.msg183727#msg183727

As to Lexan, keep it cool. It has a tendency to get warm from the cutting then melt and turn to a huge gooey mess then crack when it cools.

One time I was deep hole line boring a half inch hole up the center of a 1 inch round lexan rod and it got hot and melted inside, so to cool it I sprayed some light lube or something in there and it instantly made the most amazing crazed pattern inside.

Oh second try I used plenty of coolant and then it worked fine 

[WellRoundedIndividual]

Good luck on continuing your gravity experiments. Fun to watch.

[TomFoolery]

I know how magnets work. I work with them every day.

I have answered all of your questions ...

By the way, you said that you worked with magnets every day, and I would love to know exactly what that means. You use equipment which uses magnets every day? you handle bare magnets every day?

I'm so glad you've been answering all of my questions previously, but there's still another question I asked and I really would be grateful for an answer.

You said you worked with magnets every day.

What do you mean by that? I'll grant that "every day" probably means during work days only, and probably not exactly every day, but definitely a good number of working days out of any given month.
Obviously some days you may be mostly working with other things, or in a bored meeting (LOL intentional misspelling) but I take your claim to mean that  you work many days out of each month with magnets.
I'm not denying that.

But what do you mean by "work with?"  What kind of work with magnets? what kind of magnets?

Thanks!

[WellRoundedIndividual]

The previously mentioned servo motors that use the Halls effect for detection of rotor position which allows the motor to commutate in the proper order.

[TomFoolery]

The previously mentioned servo motors that use the Halls effect for detection of rotor position which allows the motor to commutate in the proper order.

I do remember you asking me if *I* knew about servo motors. I don't remember you indicating that your daily magnet work was related to servo motors. But that's wonderful!
I know a bit about them myself, so maybe we have some common ground.
I actually one time designed and built a driver circuit for driving two brushless DC motors that had hall commutating output signals. I used a couple discrete logic chips so I had an enable input and a direction input, then those fed some international rectifier half-bridge drivers which controlled the fets. I did it so I could drive the brushless motors with a board that was designed to drive a brushed servo motor.
Granted there was no timing advance control -- but hey it was for a one-off personal project and it made the two brushless motors operate like DC motors and I was able to complete my project.

But please, if you might be so generous, tell me more about this daily work of yours with magnets..

Are you designing the hall commutating modules? Like drawing up the PCBs? Or drawing up the blueprints for the magnet factory to form the magnets you indicate? Or do you work at the factory that sinters the magnets for these motors?
Or do you just operate an industrial 3D printer or other industrial machine that has servos in it?

I'm trying to get a grasp on what exactly you meant by the phrase "Work with magnets every day."

Thanks!

[WellRoundedIndividual]

I design, build and program machines for my company in-house. I draw up the wiring schematics, I program the PLCs (we use Automation Direct, but I have used Siemens and Allen Bradley, as well). Sometimes we use PC based controls with CodeSys. I program the servo motor drives (we have used Lenze, ABB, and Kollmorgen AKD) - so for that I must understand how the motor works.  From time to time we get a bad motor from the factory (we still use the Lenze brushless AC rotary servo motors no matter the drive). We use VFDs to drive AC motors for some parts of the machine, as well. Its a pretty full gamut of required knowledge and their interactions - mechanical, electrical, and programming.

[TomFoolery]

I design, build and program machines for my company in-house. I draw up the wiring schematics, I program the PLCs (we use Automation Direct, but I have used Siemens and Allen Bradley, as well). Sometimes we use PC based controls with CodeSys.

Wow that is so cool!

I program the servo motor drives

Sweeet! I designed and built my own servo motor drives using 8 bit PIC micro controllers, IRF half bridge drivers, mosfets, and wrote the PID code for them in assembly!

(we have used Lenze, ABB, and Kollmorgen AKD) - so for that I must understand how the motor works.  From time to time we get a bad motor from the factory (we still use the Lenze brushless AC rotary servo motors no matter the drive). We use VFDs to drive AC motors for some parts of the machine, as well. Its a pretty full gamut of required knowledge and their interactions - mechanical, electrical, and programming.

That's all really wonderful.

Do you think it was a little bit of a stretch to claim that you "work with magnets every day?"

I mean, that's all wonderful work you do. But you gotta admit, what you've just described is "Working every day with machinery which uses components which contain magnets."
Which pretty  much is true for all of industry, and really leaves you with a high level theoretical general understanding but it explains why you never really drilled down deep into the topic of magnetism.

Now I'm sure you've taken apart the odd bad motor for a look, or maybe even in a pinch repaired one on a Friday night before new years day to keep production rolling, and maybe during one of those events you even adjusted the position of the commutating sensor magnet, but I hardly think that's even close to part of your general daily work.

By your standard, yeah, there have been many times in my life where I worked with magnets every day too, when I've been designing, building, troubleshooting, or repairing any technology that uses components which use magnets.
Every phone repair technician works with magnets every day. Every appliance technician works with magnets every day. Every automobile mechanic works with magnets every day. Pretty much magnets are in everything.

But anyway, I'm still very pleased to know a CNC automation expert such as yourself and I have no doubt that you excel in that field. I'm sure there's a lot I could learn from you in that field!

[WellRoundedIndividual]

I would venture to say that a degree mechanical engineer that has 13 years in the field of automation and motion control has quite a bit more knowledge on how magnets work than any of those 3 techs you just named. I am one of those rare engineers who even admits to learning a lot of his trade on the job from maintenance technicians that have been doing their job for 30 years. I like programming robots more though.

Edit: just got home. Magnets and iron filings have arrived. Time to take some measurements and make a CAD file for the lexan.

[TomFoolery]

I would venture to say that a degree mechanical engineer that has 13 years in the field of automation and motion control has quite a bit more knowledge on how magnets work than any of those 3 techs you just named.

I dare say so, I have no doubt whatsoever that you're in the top 1% of people in the world when it comes to magnets.
But that's also completely besides the point I'm making - and the question I asked of whether you think you may have stretched the truth  a little when claiming to "work with magnets every day."

See here's the dilemma.  And I explain this so you understand how I process information. When information comes, there's two aspects to it: What does the information say, and how reliable does it appear to be.

The fact is, there really *are* people who do literally work with magnets every day: The people who design and the people who build your motors, the magnets for them, speakers, magnetrons, etc.

So while you certainly know more about magnets than 99% of the of the world, there are still people who know more about it than you - and those are the people who really *do* work with magnets every day.

So you definitely claimed a level of expertise you clearly do not hold.

(As a side note, I'm not claiming to know any more than you about magnets. Whatever I did know that you didn't I already taught you. )

I say all this to point out that when you make exaggerated claims  about your own activities in order to try to win an argument or convince someone of something, the truth does always come out and then you're worse off than you were before because now people are going to be less prone to trust you.
 
And this brings me back around to what I said about information and the meta-information -- the reliability clues.

I am one of those rare engineers who even admits to learning a lot of his trade on the job from maintenance technicians that have been doing their job for 30 years. I like programming robots more though.

yeah continually learning is definitely part of engineering in my book.
And I like programming robots better too, for what that's worth.

Edit: just got home. Magnets and iron filings have arrived. Time to take some measurements and make a CAD file for the lexan.

That is most excellent news! I can't wait to see your contraption do whatever it is going to do!

[TomFoolery]

Since we're all doing magnetic experiments, and since I still had a string hanging from the ceiling, I couldn't resist the urge.
Here's a little magnet repelling a little block of carbon without touching it.
Nothing new, but still fun to watch and fun to do.

[WellRoundedIndividual]

Nice. I got my lexan in yesterday. Gave the CAD file to my CNC guy. Hopefully will be done soon

[TomFoolery]

Nice. I got my lexan in yesterday. Gave the CAD file to my CNC guy. Hopefully will be done soon

Hey friend,
How is progress? I'm looking forward to the results of your working model of magnetic field.

[WellRoundedIndividual]

Hey, been a while. Unfortunately, our machine shop is so backed up they haven't gotten to my "government work." I am not sure if I should push more or just give it to someone outside the shop. I don't really know anyone though that has machining capabilities. Hopefully, you give me the benefit of the doubt here and believe the truth of my statements.