Question

1. Iron metal comes in magnetically “soft” and “hard” forms. Briefly explain the structuraldifferences between them and draw magnetic hysteresis curves for each, indicating on your curves the coercive field and the remanent magnetization.

Answer 1

A ferromagnetic material can possess magnetization in the absence of an external magnetic field. The two groups of magnetic materials are soft magnetic materials and hard magnetic materials. Iron is a good example of a ferromagnetic material. The classification of iron based on the magnetic properties are hard iron and soft iron. The main difference between hard iron and soft iron is that hard iron cannot be demagnetized once it is magnetized whereas soft iron can be demagnetized once it is magnetized.