Q 01/05

The word magnet comes from a Greek term meaning a stone from which ancient place?

A) Magnesia

B) Macedonia

C) Miletus

D) Malta

Answer · why

A) Magnesia

Lodestones were found there, in Anatolia; the site is Manisa in modern Turkey. Suspended lodestones became the first compasses.

Q 02/05

Lodestones are naturally magnetised pieces of which mineral?

A) Hematite

B) Galena ore

C) Pyrite

D) Magnetite

Answer · why

D) Magnetite

Only a small fraction of that mineral on Earth is found magnetised, and the name lodestone means course stone or leading stone in Middle English.

Q 03/05

Which three elements are the classic ferromagnetic metals strongly attracted to a magnet?

A) Iron, nickel and cobalt

B) Copper, zinc and tin

C) Gold, silver and platinum

D) Aluminium, lead and chromium

Answer · why

A) Iron, nickel and cobalt

Everything else responds to a magnetic field too, but so weakly that the effect usually needs lab instruments to detect.

Q 04/05

What happens if you break a bar magnet in two to try to separate its poles?

A) You get one north and one south piece

B) Both pieces lose their magnetism

C) You get two complete magnets

D) The pieces repel each other permanently

Answer · why

C) You get two complete magnets

Poles are just a way of naming the two ends. No one has ever isolated a single magnetic pole, or monopole, though physicists keep looking.

Q 05/05

Heating a magnet past what threshold destroys the alignment of its domains and demagnetises it?

A) Its flash point

B) Its Kelvin point

C) Its Debye point

D) Its Curie point

Answer · why

D) Its Curie point

Molecular motion scrambles the alignment of the magnetic domains, and the magnet loses its field entirely.