#ScienceStories

As part of Bill Wilkinson’s (DrWilkinsonSci on Twitter) amazing summer project #sciencestories (inspired by #50Allusions by PositivTeacha on Twitter), I’ve been writing a brief story of magnetism (here is the link to a word version). This is just the first draft so it’d be great to get some comments on it. The idea behind to project is to provide teachers with the resources to explain certain aspects of science through story-telling, whilst encouraging those vital reading and comprehension skills.

I chose magnetism as my story due to my research into half-metallic ferromagnets (amongst other things) for my PhD. I’ve tried to focus specifically on magnets themselves, rather than being drawn into the motor effect later on, but have found pitching it at the right level quite difficult. For a while I had included the ideas of ferromagnetism, paramagnetism and diamagnetism to explain the different reactions materials can have to magnetic fields. This is because whilst the paperclip has a paramagnetic response to an applied field, water has a diamagnetic response and is repelled by the field that induces the magnetism. Explaining this in a simple manner is really hard, and I’m not sure how well I’ve achieved this.

I can’t tell you how proud I am of the title though.