Have you ever hung a picture up on your fridge? Made a call on your phone? Rang a doorbell? I bet you have! And when you did, you needed a magnet to make it possible. Magnets have been around for thousands of years and we still use them every day. A magnet is any material that pulls towards certain kinds of metals. Magnets pull towards the metal in your refrigerator door, which is why they can hold papers and pictures in place without any tape or glue. The paper is trapped between the magnet and the door and stays there because the pull between the two things is very strong. Magnetism is the force between two things that pulls together or pushes apart. This is the way we describe magnets when they get close to something that they can interact with, like some kinds of metal. It can be a strong or weak push or pull. You might have even had a paper fall down if the magnetism wasn't strong enough between the magnet and what you were hanging it on. Let's learn more about magnets and how they work. 

Magnets
A pole is one of the two sides of a magnet where the pull towards or the push away from other things is the strongest. These two sides always act the same way. In fact, if you try to put two "push" poles of a magnet next to each other, you wouldn't be able to. That is because when you put two of same poles together, they will repel, or push away, from one another. Go ahead and try it out! It can be really hard, if not impossible, to put two of the same poles together. On the other hand, if you put two different poles together, they will attract, or pull towards, each other. If they are strong, the two magnets will snap quickly together when they get close. This is why a magnet that you use to hang things up needs to be opposite from what it is being hung on. 

A compass is another thing that needs magnets to work. A compass is what people use to tell what direction they are going in. The reason it works is that the arrow in it will always point north. That is because the Earth acts like a very large magnet. 

Something interesting about magnets is that their two poles will always act the same way. If you cut the magnet in half, you create two new ones, each with two poles that will keep acting the same way in terms of how they pull or push other things. We can keep cutting it and cutting it until we are only left with one single atom with two different poles. And guess what- you can't separate them either! 

Opposite poles will attract each other.

Modified from OpenStax Physics

Temporary and Permanent Magnets
Some metals have strong magnetism and others are weak. What is interesting is that a strong magnet can help a weak one become stronger and it can even help something that isn't magnetic become so. Think of this: you can use a strong magnet to pick up something small, like a nail. A nail is a weak magnet by itself. If you touched two nails together, they wouldn't stick together. But, if you press a strong magnet to the nail, it can pick up other nails! That's because the strong magnet is sharing its strength. Pretty cool! 

Magnets in our World
So many things need magnets to work. From your car to your credit card and iPad, magnets are everywhere. Thanks to what we know and understand about magnets and what they do, we can do a lot of cool things.