Update, 12/9: The contest is officially closed. Congrats to our three winners!
The folks behind Buckyballs have given us 3 sets of the magnetic desktoys — which normally cost $29.95 — to give away to you, our loyal readers. Here’s how you can win: On our Facebook wall or in the comments below, explain in one sentence how magnets work, a subject that has baffled many of the great minds of our time. Scientific rigor is not required, but originality and creativity are. (No Wikipedia copy-pasting!) Unfortunately, this contest is only open to US winners.
Bonus that applies beyond the contest: Through December 15th, enter “Geekosystem” in the section on getbuckyballs.com that asks you for a promo code and you’ll receive 15% off your order.
Buckyballs demo video below:
Two magnets of opposite attractions meet in a bar and as they say the rest is history.
It’s all done through the amazing power of awesome.
Magnets connect using Jesus Rays. They’re basically god glue, they’re the leftovers from the creation or the planet. How else would the world keep it’s nice round shape?
When the elements (Water, Fire, Air and Dirt) combine into one super element, a rainbow is born.
The resulting force turns the super element into a physical manifestation of its power: the magnet.
Small particles within the magnet line up in a certain way that forms magnet force, which attracts other substances with magnet force as well a substances whose particle are lined up so as to be receptive to magnet force.
First they do a CAPTCHA – 13 effin times – and then then log in and leave a very clever comment. Whammo.
Bonus? I got the first comment with a Gravatar.
Magnets work through the mysterious actions of the Higgins-Doolittle particle, a little understood building block of all matter. Through the strange attractive force of the HG particle charged objects change their relationship to gravity and become unsuitable as flower sellers. Forced into unfamiliar circumstances they masquerade as foreign royalty before eventually admitting their undying love for grumpy professors.
Magnets have rainbows inside of them, and everyone knows that rainbows attract.
What people refer to as “magnets” are actually protrusions into this dimension. The “positive” and “negative” forces are from the two universes with the closest frequencies to ours, with higher and lower frequencies respectively, trying to get closer and closer to each other by moving through our plane of existence. Thankfully, our being between the two is the only thing that is keeping them from destructively interfering and destroying the multiverse.
In accordance with this, the use of electricity helps keep these protrusions apart, so an increase in playing of video games is recommended. Do your part for the galaxy!
Gasp! I only just noticed the one sentence restriction.
Magnets actually did not exist until the original flame war began over whether Grog or Thag’s rock was a better pet, because while they were angrily grunting and waving sharp sticks, the pet rocks decided that they didn’t really need their masters, had a lovely rock marriage, and their descendants got smaller and more spherical until they became the modern magnet.
Roughly 39 minutes prior to the beginning of recorded human history, Chuck Norris attempted to stick two mountains together by the force of his will alone. In what could quite possibly be considered the most epic of all epic fails, the mountains did not stay stuck together (the failure was on the part of the mountains, not Chuck Norris. This is due to the fact that the only personal failure that Chuck Norris can ever experience is failure to fail). In frustration, Chuck Norris slammed the two mountains together, simultaneously fusing them into a single object, and then breaking the newly formed Mega Mountain (which did not involve adolescent ninjas or Hulk Hogan) into millions of pieces that scattered across the world.
Due to the anger of Chuck Norris being sufficient to frighten rocks into obedience for all eternity, from that day forward, all fragments of Mega Mountain will stick together whenever they are near one another. In order to do their best to fulfill the original goal of Chuck Norris, only the portions of the fragments that were originally part of the two different mountains will stick together. Portions of the fragments that came from the same mountain will actively push away from one another in an effort to avoid accidentally sticking together, thereby mocking Chuck Norris. Never mock Chuck Norris.
Oh…one sentence. Ok…let me try this again:
Never mock Chuck Norris.
ov
L e
Magnets> < Magnets.
that didnt work like planned
Physicist John Wheeler said “matter tells spacetime how to curve, and spacetime tells matter how to move”… thanks to Einstein and Lorentz, our familiar three orthogonal dimensions have been inextricably joined with a fourth, time. Another physicist, James Clerk Maxwell, explained that there is a similar relationship between electricity and magnetism: a magnetic field is created by a changing electric field and vice versa, joining the two in a dynamic relationship called the electromagnetic field. This field can look a little like a whirlpool in water, but there are ways to take static “snapshots” of a magnetic whirlpool that retain its dynamic nature – for instance, by applying an electric field to a neodymium-laced ceramic while it cooks and cools. This locks the magnetic field into the matter, creating what we call a magnet. It may seem like a simple object, but it is really a whirlpool plucked from the electromagnetic dance – and by moving it through space we see glimpses of that dance as it interacts with iron-filings and paperclips and refrigerator doors.
All of the excess energy created by running hamsters.
in one sentence: Magnets do what they do because one day a rainbow unicorn fell madly in love with a zombie robot; the progeny of their love match (rainbow-zombie-robot-unicorns) discovered that without fine motor control made possible through fingers they needed some method to stick grocery lists and notes to one another onto their refrigerators — hence, the magnet was invented.
Magnets work because inside of each magnet is a tiny yet powerful magnet which provides the magnetism of the magnet.
An object is determined to be a magnet, or have magnetic properties, when that object has unpaired electrons that orbit around an atom in one direction creating the magnetic field.
Tiny people live inside magnets, and they have tiny hands that reach out and grab at each other, but they’re bipolar, so if one turns around, their love turns into hate and they want to push the other one away.
Magnets like corporations are made from Heads and Asses where by all Heads attempt to get up the Asses of those above them and of course all Heads point up and all Asses point down.
All magnets are homosexual hermaphrodites.
F**king magnets how do they work? Well you see, magnets work because they are actually tiny creatures that lust after every other tiny creature of the same species, so when you get them close together and they stick, it is because they are having sex. Thats right I went there. I’m a magnetologist.
Also forgot to mention that when they repel it is because you have two separate species of the same family.
Opposites attract.
Magnets work because if people stuck themselves together all the time we’d have no free hands to mess with each other at night.
Much like people, magnets are attracted to those completely opposite from them and reject those that are too much alike.
Magnets stick to each other because bananas don’t have bones. They have positive and negative forces due to the stride of a penguin being 1/4 the length of a an average cobra’s body when kept at 65.3 degrees. And they are attracted to metal because orange kangaroos prefer to eat spaghetti with a spork while drinking monkey-milk shakes through a bamboo straw.
As accurate as this seems, I certify that it was not attained from WikiPedia.
One Sentence Version: Magnets do their thing because boneless-banana eating penguins don’t like to eat spaghetti with sporks while drinking monkey-milk shakes in the presence of orange kangaroos when the temperature is 65.3 degrees.