Ever wondered how does magnet work? After the World Cup there is hardly anyone who wouldn't know vuvuzela. So, let's use vuvuzela to explain the principle of magnetism, shall we?

Imagine, if you will, a crowd bearing vuvuzelas. Individuals in this crowd can blow their vuvuzelas in any direction they please, however much we might wish they didn't. In a ferromagnet groups of vuvuzela players spotting their neighbours spontaneously face the same direction to play their devilish instruments. The whole crowd may not be blowing them in the same direction but groups of them will. They can be marshalled to all blow their horns in the same direction by a band leader, and once pointing in the same direction they will continue to face that way, even in the absence of the band leader.
The individuals in this group are atoms in a material, and the vuvuzelas represent the magnetic field of a single atom. Groups of players facing in the same direction represent magnetic domains and the band leader represents an applied magnetic field. The point about ferromagnets is they massively enhance an a magnetic field applied by something like a coil of wire with a current flowing through it - this is how you make an electromagnet. The difference between a "magnet" and any old bit of ferromagnet is that in a "magnet" all the domains have been lined up to face the same way.
In paramagnetic materials vuvuzelas players ignore their neighbours and play away in random directions, they respond in a somewhat feeble fashion to the directions of the band leader.
In diamagnetic materials the crowd have no vuvuzelas but use their hands as a substitute, rather petulantly they face the opposite direction to that proposed by the band leader. In scientific language the hands represent induced magnetic dipole moments.

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