Magnets - What Will A Magnet Attract??

The purpose of this lesson is for students to discover what objects will be attracted by a magnet and why.

There are 4 separate activities for this lesson plan

1. Predict. Print out the prediction page through the link at the bottom. This page is meant to be done before you start the lesson. Have the students cut out the objects on the page then glue them in either the attract of not attract categories on the paper if they think the magnet will pick it up or not. 

2. This activity is meant to be done in class with several different materials, so the students can test the different objects out and keep a record of them.

3. This activity is meant to be done at home after doing the other one in class. Giving each student a magnet to borrow and take home have them try to find things around their home that may or may not be attracted by a magnet then recording them on their paper.

4. This last activity is optional. It can be used as an assessment at the end of the unit, or additional work if the students need extra practice to retain the information.

Link for all 4 activities: Magnetic Attraction

Background Information:

All substances actually display magnetic properties, but most show them to such a very small degree that we usually consider these materials nonmagnetic. Highly sophisticated scientific equipment is needed to detect magnetic characteristics at these low levels. On the other hand, a few metallic elements such as iron, nickel, cobalt, rare earths, plus some of their alloys like steel and strontium ferrite display magnetic properties strongly enough to be considered magnetic. All metals are not considered magnetic. A common misconception easily corrected by observing a common magnet's effect on brass, copper, or aluminum.

Discussion Questions:

-What do you know about magnets that should help you make good predictions?

-What is the most important piece of info about an object that will help you make a good prediction about its magnetic attraction?

-How many objects were attracted to the magnet?...not attracted?

-Were you surprised by the reaction of any of the objects? Why? What happened?

-Did everyone have the same results? What caused the differences?