Question

Notice the two ends of this horseshoe are labelled N and S for north and south. One could say they are the same magnitude, but opposite directions, if you want to think of them in terms of vectors. Similar to electric charges, in magnetism, opposites attract, and likes repel. So when you brought two poles of the magnet together that were the same, they repelled each other, and when you brought two poles of the magnet together that were different, they attracted one another.

3. Now take one of the magnets and bring it close to a metal paperclip. What do you notice? Repeat this procedure, only be sure to hold the paperclip in your hand. Comment on the effect of distance.

4. Assume you just used the “north” end of the magnet in #3 (though we don’t know this for certain). Repeat #3 with the “south”, or opposite, end of the magnet and write down your results below.

Answer 1

3) When a permanent magnet is brought close to the clip it attracts the clip. As you increase the distance between the magnet and the paperclip,  the attractive force decreases and die out.

4 The attractive force doesn't depend upon whether we bring the north pole or south pole of the magnet. The metal paperclip consists of small tiny magnets randomly oriented (the unpaired electrons are required to act like tiny magnets e.g. iron, nickel, so not all the metals get attracted to a magnet). The magnet aligns the tiny magnets in such a way that the opposite poles of tiny magnets get align in the direction of the pole of magnet. As we know alike poles repel and opposite attracts, so north pole aligns south poles of tiny magnets close to it and south pole align north poles and we get attractive force in both the cases.