[meteorite-list] Meteor's Appearance Over Wisconsin A Hot Topic

[MexicoDoug at aol.com]

En un mensaje con fecha 01/06/2005 11:38:10 AM  Mexico Standard Time, 
dfreeman at fascination.com escribe:

>Could someone  Please contact Jessica Bock and tell 
>her meteorites in general public's  concept/ definition  
>of what it takes to be "magnetic"....are not  magnetic.

Dave, Don't get me started on this one again, with all due  respect, and 
understanding of your issue with potential "layman" confusion that  magnetic means 
the object is a permanent magnet.  Magnetism requires dance  partners.  
Responding to a permanent magnet is just as magnetic as being a  permanent magnet 
in most popular dictionary definitions. Under a specific  definition you would 
like to impose, you can change the world, but... In science  responding to a 
magnet, paramagnetism, is just as magnetic as a permanent  magnet.  Science 
recognizes paramagnetism is a bonafide magnetic  property.  Your car engine block 
argument is only shooting yourself in the  foot.  

Example just posted to the list was troilite.  See what  Norton says in the 
Cambridge Encyclopedia of Meteorites about Troilite, and get  him to change 
before working on telling the public that iron is not a magnetic  metal:

page 207, Norton, Cambridge Encyclopedia of Meteorites, Cambridge  University 
Press, 2002:

"Pyrrhotite is magnetic but with varying  intensity.  Oddly, it increases in 
magnetism as the deficiency in iron  increases.  Under natural conditions 
within meteorites, troilite is  non-magnetic; but if it is melted and cooled, it 
becomes magnetic."

Dave,  I believe none of these refer to permanent magnets, and try as he will 
to  sidestep your issues in his books with the phrase "attracted to a 
magnet", even  kind O. R. Norton is totally clear here that he accepts that iron is 
magnetic,  which you say it is not.  The problem you seek to address is not to 
tell  people that they are misinformed.  Just suggest kindly that that clarify 
 that meteorites are magnetic but not permanent magnets themselves.  Or to  
be more specific "meteorites, like engine blocks are paramagnetic."  They  
attract magnets.  Notice how I worded that.  They attract magnets,  even though I 
could have said magnets attract them.  The shoe is on the  other foot and it 
is equally correct.  That's magnetism and magnetic, two  dance partners to do 
it!  A permanent magnet without something else to act  with it is like a tree 
falling in a forest making a sound with no one around to  hear it.
Saludos, your friend Doug