Kinds of magnets

Reshma lives in a coastal town in Kerala and loves writing stories. For her grandmother's 60th birthday she is writing one about a ship carrying spices from Kerala long ago. At night the sailors find their way by the stars. But in her story a storm comes and clouds cover the sky. How will they find their way now?

Reshma finds out that travellers used a magnetic compass. She has seen magnets before, too: on pencil boxes and purses to keep them shut, and on the duster for her classroom board. Look around your home and you will find more: the rubber seal of a fridge door, a phone cover that snaps shut, a geometry box.

The first magnets were found in nature. These natural magnets are called lodestones, and they were discovered in ancient times. Later, people found out that magnets could also be made from pieces of iron.

Today most magnets are made by people from different materials. The magnets in your school laboratory, and the ones in pencil boxes, stickers and toys, are artificial magnets: made, not found in nature.

Magnets are made in different shapes and sizes, as people need them. Your book shows a bar magnet (a straight bar), a U-shaped magnet, a ring magnet, a disc magnet, a cylindrical magnet and a spherical magnet (shaped like a ball).