Lab Assignment: Magnetic Forces

In this lab you will explore the forces on permanent magnetic dipole monent μ caused by external magnetic fields. Everyone knows that magents repel and attract each other depending on whether like or unlike poles are facing each other. In this lab we will examine what happens when a typicall magnetic dipole interacts with a well defined magnetic field and measure the forces on the dipole under different magnetic field configurations.

Assignment:

1. Understand the effects of a magentic field on a dipole magnet
2. Determine the magnetic moment μ of the dipole
3. Measure the axial magnetic field gradient of a current carrying circular loop of wire

All of the calculations, calibration tasks and measurements are described in the two links below. The first document "MF1-A Student Experiments" document asks general questions and describes the spring constant calibration tha you'll need to complete the experiment. The second document describes the measurments you will make.

TeachSpinMagneticForce.pdf: This documents describes the spring constant calibration step and provides exercises that may help understand what you are measuring.

http://www.teachspin.com/instruments/magnetic_force/experiments.shtml: This webpage describes the actual measurement you'll perform.

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