Do magnets affect charged air(ions). Can it direct where it wants the ionic air to go?

Question

And why is it that air can be charged but a solution cannot...ie. a solution cannot contain only anions.

Answer 1

The electric force is wicked strong. It is 36 orders of magnitude stronger than gravity! Thus, if you wanted to reproduce the same amount of force that the Earth exerts on you with gravity, it would only take a miniscule amount of raw electrons (less than a biollionth of a gram).

The fallout from this is much what you stated above. It's not so much that there CAN'T be much charge lying around, but rather that charges are so incredibly strong that they will pretty easily annihilate anything that gets in their way to obtaining neutrality.

So if you fill a solution with anions, those anions will PRODUCE cations to balance them, even if they have to rip apart the water (or whatever other solvent you're using) to get them. But part of the quirkiness you get from water is the strong polarity that a water molecule has... a huge number of positive ends of water molecules can crowd around an anion in solution and help to stabilize it.

Not so for air. Gas molecules move too fast to stabilize each other in this way. The 'charge' that air carries thus is not really present in the gaseous particles but rather on the surfaces of other things suspended in the air, particularly microscopic water droplets. Thus you can only get lightning from clouds (filled with water) and not from open air. This is also the principle on which some air purifiers work: by inducing an electric current in a grating, the carged particles will be pulled out of the air leaving only the uncharged air molecules.

Which also answers your question, in a manner. Yes, a magnetic field can affect charged particles, but no, there aren't really any charged gases to affect. They do use magnetic fields to contain plasmas, which is about as close as you'll get to a 'charged gas', but plasma is really a different, very unstable, form of matter.

Answer 2

A magnet can affect charged air ions but only if they are moving. And they have to move pretty fast for there to be a significant effect. The air may contain ions, but a volume of air cannot have an net charge as a whole for very long. So there must be both positive and negative charges in a plasma, but enough energy to keep them from uniting. That is why plasmas exist only at high temperatures or under electric field conditions (the electric field separates the charges).

Answer 3

Not unless the ions are not moving. If you have an ion just sitting in a magnetic field, nothing happens. If the Ion starts moving perpendicular to the magnetic field, it will be deflected. For example if it's an Anion moving to the right and the magnetic field is pointing down, then the Anion will deflect away from your computer screen.
As for your second question, I don't know (never knew you couldn't charge a solution)....

Answer 4

Magnets are most effective on charged particles in a very high vacuum environment, say Pabs of 10^-7 bars.