We don’t really think about it a lot, but magnets are universal. They are in a lot of products (including many we don’t even think of), and they are in our social conscience as we use them to describe any two things that connect. and attract. We still look at magnets as a bit of a novelty, but they are everywhere both physically and in our conscienceness.
At the biggest and most important level, the Earth has a magnetic field which allows for life on the planet to exist. The Earth’s Magnetosphere helps protect the planet from ultraviolet radiation that comes from the sun. Additionally the magnetic field helps animals like birds and fish to navigate and migrate. There have also been studies that suggest that changing the direction you sleep in relation to the magnetic field can affect your sleep. And of course we all know that when you’re in the wild a compass if your best friend, and of course that is based on the electromagnetic field to help point the way.
But magnets and magnetism also has an incontrovertible meaning in our heads for connecting things. We need to look no further than online tools that connect job seekers and businesses (in fact there are more than one of these sites that uses the magnet metaphor) or even an online tool that helps students find work placements. And of course, there’s an app for that, and what list would be complete without demonstrating that someone literally has called their app Magnet.
The use of magnetic technology has also become a foundational element of medical diagnostics with MRIs (magnetic resonance imaging) because the best way to see inside the both without cutting it open. There is some research that has found there is a benefit to the body from particular types of magnets and even some belief both in modern medicine and through the ages that magnets positioned properly can help with pain management.
Magnets exist in our vocabulary for so much more than just describing a piece of metal that has an attraction. We talk about it to describe relationships, we talk about how someone can attract trouble, and is often used to describe attracting the opposite sex. It’s amazing to think about how entrenched the concept of attraction that magnets have in our society and how freely we use it linguistically.
And as an even more extreme example, now that the Fast and Furious franchise has raced tanks and dropped cars from planes, it is only natural that the next step of evolution would be playing with magnets. While the movie may ask you to suspend your disbelief, there is some basis of fact in using magnetism and the ability to make make the unexpected happen.
And that’s not the only movie that shows how fun and useful magnets can be in a make believe world; look at the X-Men franchise with Magneto being one of the strongest mutants with the power to manipulate magnetic fields, which in the world we live in gives him almost unlimited ability as everything around us has magnets or metals.
A Magnet and a Phone
This is all a long walk to talk about how our phones, probably the most important accessory we have today (especially for the younger generation), are taking the magnet concept to its fullest conclusion with the addition of a magnet to the back of the phone to allow for cool new features today and for new developments that will come in future. The next evolution of the phone is here with the addition of a powerful magnet on the back of the phones, and while that seems new and ground breaking, it actually just brings the phone into line with the rest of our world that is full of magnets and magnetism.