Question

Take a bar magnet that can be cut with scissors or a knife. Take iron filings on a sheet of paper and place the magnet on it. Most of the iron filings will be seen to stick to its poles.

Now cut the magnet into two pieces as shown in the picture and place those pieces on iron filings. Pick up each of the pieces and observe them. What do you find?

Answer 1

• When the bar magnet is cut into two pieces and the pieces are placed on iron filings, we observe that iron filings stick to both ends of each piece.
• This shows that each piece of the cut magnet behaves like a complete magnet. Each piece develops its own north pole and south pole.

Thus, even when a magnet is cut into smaller pieces, each piece has two poles. The north and south poles of a magnet cannot be separated.