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

[David Freeman]

Dear Doug;
Try telling that nit-picky scientific story to those that carry a paper 
clip on a string and  actively use that simple tool to distinguish 
 magnetic meteorites in the field......BAH!!!  Guess I deal with too 
many amateur field hunters and not enough acadamians like yourself.
Para-nuttic,
Dave F.
See thread below:

MexicoDoug at aol.com wrote:

>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  
>
>