Why does this work?

>>7806149

The same reason hitting a magnet with a hammer demagnetize it.

Taking a guess based on background knowledge: assuming it is something like an iron nail, the material is already prone to "picking up" magnetism. By aligning it with the Earth's field, you are providing a weak magnetic order. By striking the bar, phonons propagate and allow a source for spin-flip interactions that allow the bar to pick up a weak ferromagnetic order, making itself magnetic.

>>7806149
I know they used to make these lock assemblies with magnetic pins, in the 80's so it would stick to any ferric picking tools and complicate any attempt to pick them open or bypass them.

So, we'd just hit the mainbody with a hammer, and via magic physics properties, it'd kill the magnetic field or someshit and I'd just pick that shit open with our regular ass steel tools.

I still don't know why it worked, but it did. It further strengthened my belief that a regular-ass hammer can fix and solve so many problems if it's all you have.

>>7806223
my intuition was something similar, though i've never been comfortable with phonons. Having all that energy from the impulse must be enough to energize the electrons enough for them to have a chance to align their spins with the external field

>>7806236

you were a burglar in the 80's?

>>7806265
yeah, i stole your mom a few times from your dad

>>7806265
No, man, I was a freelance key control manager and material asset acquisition specialist in the 80's.

>>7806247
Magnetism in ferrous materials is from ferromagnetic ordering of the atoms, not the electrons. In something like iron, the electrons you have meaningful access to aren't going to pick up ferromagnetic ordering terribly easily because they are rather free to move around and those at the Fermi level should barely register the hammer strike at all. So, you need some high energy phonons to go around and mediate the ferromagnetic ordering of the atomic nuclei.

>>7806276
Hmm alright. I can buy the electron explanation for sure, but I think the phonon bit isn't sinking in. Any chance you have some further illumination on that end?

>>7806271
Heh, I'm 54 and you're probably older than I am

>>7806289
Ferromagnetic ordering will require some sort of communication between the atoms. That communication in a crystalline structure is done largely through phonons since they are just quantized lattice vibrations and all.

>>7806328
By like, two years, man.

>>7806276
So what I gathered is the impact, these were tiny 'natural magnets' like in a stereo speaker, it 'reset' the magnetic alignment of the magnetic-ferro pins. Like if you rub a threading needle on a magnet, it becomes temporarily magnetic, by whacking the magnet with a hammer, it temporarily becomes NOT magnetic, by 'resetting' the individual alignments of each atom. It'd be magnetic again in a few minutes.

>>7806328

Methinks /sci/ probably has the oldest avg age on 4chan

(age 52 here)

>>7806352
Damn I would not have expected that.
I'm 25 but I see /sci/ and generally think it's either really young kids trying to seem profound or it's people my age trying to seem like they didn't squander their lives already

>>7806350
>>7806352
54 here again.
Were you guys ever on Usenet?

>>7806383
No, I first used AOL in 1994 at my roommate's expense for a couple months, which I thought was great, went off-grid and didn't use the internet again until 2007.

>>7806352

I just turned 19.

>>7806389
Heh, I never was on AOL since I always had free dialup to university through the AOL period.
Tied up my land line, but no one ever called me anyway :-)

>>7806352

>implying it's not full of 12 - 16 yr olds looking for homework help, to be the next jacob barnett, or insecure high schoolers applying to college

/sci/'s so shit

>>7806443
Everything on 4chan and the rest of the internet is shit. Except /ck/, for some reason.

>>7806397
Me too.

>>7806149
Magnetic materials are made up of small "magnetic domains", tiny natural magnets caused by the spins of atoms and electrons lining up.

When the magnetic domains line uo, you have a strong magnet. By applying energy, you can allow the domains to move - this is also why heating a magnet will demagnetize it.

Naturally, though, these magnets want to line up with Earth's magnetic field. So if you allow the domains to move, they will tend to settle in to this alignment, creating a magnet.

This is actually how natural magnets formed - iron cooling while aligned with the magnetic field.

>>7806289
Phonons are just atomic-scale mechanical vibrations. Because atoms have discrete energy levels and vibrational modes, if you look closely enough, sound waves in a material break down into quantized phonons, just like discrete energy levels cause light to break down into photons.

90% of the time, if you mentally replace "phonon" with "tiny jiggle", you'll still have a decently useful picture of what's going on.

>>7806149
You are shaking loose all the little compass needles in the metal and making them point the same direction.