Thread: Electromagnetism

What is the smallest element or particle to exhibit a magnetic effect?

Originally Posted by spinner42

What is the smallest element or particle to exhibit a magnetic effect?

Quatum Physics-Photon
Classical Physics-Light Wave

Both still aren used and is reffered to as particle/wave duality (or as I like to call it, wave/particle duality :wink.

Hold on a second, I think I'm wrong there. Actually it is quarks. Quarks inside of protons and neutrons (which are called Hadron-baryons (or just baryons)), quarks have what is called an 'up' charge or a 'down' charge. An up quark has +2/3 charge and a down quark has a -1/3 charge.

Other quarks with +2/3 charge are called: charmed and top.
Other quarks with -1/3 charge are called strange and bottom.

These different quarks are often reffered to as 'flavours'.

Their motion inside of the proton (or neutron) causes a magnetic field. Neutrons don't have a magnetic effect because it has 2 down quarks (-1/3 chargex2) and 1 up quark (+2/3), this results in neutrality. A proton has two up quarks and one down quark.