Author Topic: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?  (Read 945 times)

Offline Gene

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Re: Stainless steel can contaminate the solution?
« Reply #15 on: April 19, 2021, 07:04:51 PM »
I agree. Just because a magnet won't be attracted to a metal, it doesn't mean it doesn't contain magnetic domains.  Hematite is like this (a.k.a. red iron oxide ore).  It isn't magnetic of sorts as in it can't be magnetized but it is a little magnetic from the steel content but the magnetic domains are so fluid that as soon as you remove the magnetizing energy, they collapse and don't retain any magnetism.

"Magnetic hematite" is a lie! The only iron oxide that I know can be magnetized is colloquially referred to as magnetite, a.k.a. lodestone, a.k.a. black iron oxide ore.

I'd bet pretty much anything with a ferrous metal as part of its alloy if even it can't be magnetized, it will, at a minimum have a magnetic eddy current for a magnet moving over it whether or not its easily detectable.

The famous experiment with copper is dropping a magnet down a tube of copper (copper pipe). It doesn't go "clunk". It drops slowly from the magnetic eddy current. In this case, as you say, it isn't really "magnetic" but there's something about copper that causes magnetic eddy currents to form within it when a magnet passes over it. As you point out, several metals are like this - some strongly enough you can see the effect and some not but its still there.