What's the difference between magnetism and gravity?

Answer 1

Magnetism attracts the protons and neutrons in a metal by aligning them up all the same way. Gravity is the force of the universe pushing you into earth. Gravity is like a bowling ball on a trampoline. The bowling ball is earth, if you place a golf ball on the trampoline it will roll towards the bowling ball, not because the bowling ball is pulling it, but space, (the trampoline) is letting it fall towards the ball.

Answer 2

Gads! I read through the othe answers and was discouraged that most never even attempted to answer your question. Those that tried were filled with so much technical gobbledygook that it even confused me. And I knew the answer.

All objects exert an attraction to each other. This attraction is very weak, but the more massive the object, the stronger the attraction. A pencil is kinda small, so the attraction to another pencil is very weak. The friction of the desk is so strong, compaed to the attraction between the two pencils, that the pencils will not come together. Still the attraction is still there.

The moon, as big as it is, has a much smaller gravity attraction than the earth. That's why a 120 pound person on Earth only weighs 20 pounds on the moon.

Magnetism is a very different kind of force than gravity. An object that has been made magnetic will attract only objects containing iron. (steel, for instance or other blends of metal that include iron) Magnetism is much stronger than gravity, but it's attraction does not reach out very far. Even the most powerful magnets will not pull on iron much farther than a few yards.

I hope this explains the differences.

Answer 3

What Frax said. They've got a fairly good idea of where magnetism arises, but gravity is still a mystery. In a couple of years, once the Large Hadron Collider is built and running at CERN, they will be smashing up some more particles and looking for a thing called the Higgs Boson, which, if they find it, will be in charge of gravity. If they don't find it, I think it will be something of an "oh sheeeet" moment.

But in simple language:

Gravity is a force that always exists between two objects in proportion to their mass. The more massive the objects, the bigger the force. The further apart the objects, the weaker the force. That's Newton's angle. Gravity also bends space ever so slightly - that's Einstein's contribution.

And magentism is... er... well, it has poles. North likes South but hates North, and South likes North but hates South. You tend only to find it in certain types of materials - stuff with iron in it in particular. The Earth's magnetic field arises because the earth's core is molten iron (and other things), constantly churning over.

I'm a bit flummoxed by magnetism to be honest. Why would stuff do that? I dunno...

Answer 4

If that could be answered completely the unified field theorem (UFT) would be finally finished. Gravity and magnetism are recognized as 2 of the 3 remaining fundamental forces. (There were originally 4 when the UFT was first presented, then Richard Feinman (sp?) reduced them to 3 with his famous integrals). One basic difference is magnetism is bipolar - it pushes and pulls, gravity is monopolar - it only pulls. Also, magnetism is a consequence of material properties, gravity is a consequence of the very existance of matter, regardless of properties.

Answer 5

Both are basic forces in Nature. Gravity is due to mass and magnetism is due to electric charge in motion (if we talk about electromagnetism we include charge in motion and motionless).
Please notice that I have avoided saying that gravity is always attractive while magnetism can be attractive and repulsive because the former is not 100% clear in current cosmology (the gravitational constant problem). I have also avoided saying that both depends on the inverse of the square root of the distance between bodies because that is not 100% clear in current cosmology again (see MOND theory). So what is completely clear nowadays is that gravity is a force due to mass and electromagnetism is a force due to electric charge. I hope this answers your question.

Answer 6

In physics, magnetism is one of the phenomena by which materials exert an attractive or repulsive force on other materials.

In physics, gravitation or gravity is the tendency of objects with mass to accelerate toward each other.

Magnetism either attracts or repels and gravity just attracts.

Answer 7

Magnetism is a much stronger force than gravity and can act both as an attractive and repulsive force...unlike gravity which only acts as an attractive force.

Answer 8

1) magnetism is much stronger

2) magnetism only affects moving charged matter, gravity affects all matter

3) gravity is always attractive, magnetism can be either attractive or repulsive

4) scientists understand magnetism much better than gravity

Answer 9

Magnetic forces are fundamental forces that arise from the movement of electrical charge. Gravitation is one of the four fundamental interactions in nature, the other three being the electromagnetic force, the weak nuclear force, and the strong nuclear force. Gravitation is the weakest of these interactions, but acts over great distances and is always attractive.

Answer 10

Magnetism only acts on metal.