From Lodestone to Supermagnets: Understanding Magnetic Phenomena Alberto P. Guimarães (Wiley-VCH 2005)
E-Mail: apguima_at_cbpf.br

 


 


"Guimarães captures beautifully our romance with magnets. And in this, clear, readable book also shows us how trying to understand magnetic forces gave us the capability of manipulating with ease the electric and magnetic fields that make the modern electronic world."


Prof. Roald Hoffmann, Nobel Laureate 1981

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 

Hardcover: 200 pages
Publisher: Wiley-VCH (2005)
ISBN: 3527405577


 
   



From the Back Cover
This elegantly written book makes the topic accessible to interested readers without a scientific background. The popular science author, A. P. Guimarães, traces the history of magnets from their Greek origins to today's supermagnets. Throughout, he emphasizes the history of scientific ideas and magnetism, relating them to the general development of science as a whole, and shows how magnets play a significant role in modern life.



 



Product Description:
This easily accessible description charts the historical development of magnetism -- dating back some three thousand years. A. P. Guimarães starts with the Greeks, with the first records of magnetism, and ends with hard disks and magnetic resonance imaging. Nowadays every electric and electronic device involves the use of magnets, such that magnetic devices, including magnetic media and recording equipment, represent a world market of over 100 billion dollars each year.
Enjoyable reading for graduates, physics students, libraries, public libraries, school libraries, those interested in the natural sciences, lay readers, historians of physics.


 
   

 

 

Guimaraes: From Lodestone to Supermagnets

Physik Journal no. 1 (2006), pg. S55

Translation:

A.P. Guimaraes addresses a readership interested in science and its history in his scientific popularization, `From Lodestone to Supermagnets`. The subtitle ‘Understanding Magnetic Phenomena’ suggests a strong physical-technical orientation which the book adopts only in its second half. The author is interested primarily in giving a thorough description of the historical facts and interrelations of our understanding of magnetism from ancient times up to the present, which has shaped our lives more than almost any other physical phenomenon. One always has the impression that the text is based on careful research. Place, time, and objects relevant to events described are given in detail and supported by numerous literature references. The author introduces scientific and technical treatments in a gentle and careful manner and only to the extent that they are needed for understanding the material, and he forgoes mathematical details.

The book in its seven chapters does not attempt to give an exhaustive treatment of the topic of magnetism, but rather includes the relevant cultural- and scientific-historical background in its descriptions. Thus, Chaps. 1 and 2 shed light on ancient reports of magnetic phenomena, as they were documented for example in Greece and China, and consider the technical application of the magnetic compass which appeared in the Middle Ages, as well as the first scientific questions and descriptions relating to these phenomena, among them the picture of the magnetic force lines of the Earth which is well known today. Chapter 3 emphasizes how important the connection between the magnetism of minerals and electromagnetism, based upon electric currents, which was discovered in the 18th and 19th centuries, has become in providing the basis for the information technology which is so important to our modern world. Chapter 4 treats basic considerations such as how forces can act over long distances in space, with examples involving magnetic forces. Finally, Chaps. 5 through 7 assume a stronger physical and technical orientation, quite in the sense of the book’s subtitle, and discuss modern concepts for the description of the phenomenon of magnetism as well as current areas of its application.

This book can, owing to its good readability, be recommended reading for all those interested in science and its history. For readers who are especially interested in obtaining an overview of the current state of the art of magnetic technology, Chap. 7 in particular will provide a good popular-scientific summary.

Privatdozent Dr. Peter Wellmann, Institute for Materials Science, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.

http://www.pro-physik.de/Phy/External/PhyH/1,9289,2-3-0-0-1-phy_book_review_detail-0-23141,00.html


MAGNETS THROUGH THE AGES

J.D. Livingston, Physics World 19 (2006) 40.

With declining enrolments in science courses in the US and Europe, and with much of society viewing key results of science with scepticism, the term "popular science'' sometimes seems like an oxymoron. But thankfully, many scientists continue to write popular-science books, in which they attempt to convey to non-scientific readers some of the excitement and human side of science, and the impact of science on our history and culture. Alberto Guimarães, a physicist at the Brazilian Center for Physical Research in Rio de Janeiro, has been active for many years popularizing science in Brazil, and now has extended his reach with this book focusing on the long and colourful history of magnets and magnetism.

Guimarães begins his account as far back as the second millennium BC, noting references in Mesopotamian tablets to “grasping hematite'' (presumably magnetite, i.e. lodestone). He discusses possible knowledge of magnets in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and writings about lodestones in ancient Greece, Rome and China. He also points out that the north-south orientation of magnets was first reported in China and then only appeared in European literature many centuries later.

The first paper on magnets displaying a hint of the scientific method is the "Letter on the Magnet" written in 1269 by Pierre de Marincourt, who is better known today by his Latin name Petrus Peregrinus. Written when he was part of the army besieging the Italian city of Lucera, the letter is also the first recorded attempt to design a perpetual-motion machine based on magnets - a strange obsession that remains prevalent even today.

Other contributions that are discussed in the book are William Gilbert's De Magnete (1600), which is often called the world's first great work of experimental physics, as well as Galvani and Volta's experiments with electricity, and the familiar discoveries of Oersted, Ampere, Faraday and Maxwell that unified electricity and magnetism in the 19th century. Guimarães humanizes his history with portraits of 11 of the scientists whose work he discusses, from Gilbert and Galileo to Planck and Einstein.

Throughout the book, the author sets the history of magnetism in its broader social and cultural context, and the gradual development of scientific thought and method. A section on early Greek thought includes a discussion of the writings of Homer, Anaximander and Pythagoras, even though they wrote little about magnets. His treatment of quantum mechanics considers its relation to causality and determinism; subjectivity and objectivity; and chaos theory.

In a section entitled “Can we explain magnetism?, the author raises the question of whether science can explain anything at all, which leads to the ultimate question, “Why is there anything, rather than nothing?''. Other forays into philosophy include an exploration of concepts like the unity of nature and the conquest of nature; while Karl Marx, John Stuart Mill, Immanuel Kant and Martin Heidegger all make brief appearances.

However, readers who are interested in learning about advances in magnetic materials "from lodestone to supermagnets'' must be patient, because this subject does not appear until near the end of the book. Even then, the progress from lodestones to steels, “alnico” alloys, hard ferrites and rare-earth supermagnets is discussed all too briefly. The text closes with a review of progress in magnetic recording, a timelier of important events and a glossary of technical terms. The development of ferrite and rare-earth magnets in the late 20th century revolutionized much of modern technology, allowing the miniaturization of many electromechanical devices, including electric motors, earphones and laptop computers. However, this important point is only really made in passing.

One problem with this book is that it covers such a wide range of topics in so few pages that no topic is treated in great depth. However, it is well written and can give non-scientists a broad view of the important role that magnetism has played in the development of science. It could also help to remind scientists of certain facets of intellectual history they may have forgotten.

Like many other popular-science authors, Guimarães uses no equations, and only rarely employs numbers. There are, however, a few errors. On one page he incorrectly defines the maximum energy product of a magnet, and, a few pages later, confuses energy product with coercivity. In one chapter, he defines the rare-earth elements as including the lanthanides plus yttrium and scandium, as is often done, but in another chapter, scandium is mysteriously replaced by zirconium. He gives the chemical formula for hard ferrites as Fe9M12O, where M is barium or strontium, instead of Fe12MO19 (a big difference!). I also find it odd that his further reading lists omit any mention of Gerrit Verschuur's 1993 book Hidden Attraction: The Mystery and History of Magnetism, which covers similar ground.

Despite these flaws, From Lodestone to Supermagnets can provide informative reading for those who want a short but wide-ranging and accessible overview of the long and fascinating history of magnetism.

--------

James D. Livingston is author of Driving Force: The natural Magic of Magnets (1996 Harvard University Press) and a senior lecturer in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, US, e-mail jdliv@ mit.edu


Guimaraes, Alberto P. From Lodestone to Supermagnets: Understanding Magnetic Phenomena. (Illus.) NY: Wiley, 2005, xi+236pp, $27.95. ISBN 3527405577. Index; C.I.P.

EA-YA, GA Ac

From Lodestone to Supermagnets is intended for “graduates, physics students, libraries, those interested in the natural sciences, lay readers, [and] historians of physics.” This is a tall order – too tall, perhaps for a 200-page popular book. The volume focuses heavily on the history of magnets, discussing the writings of the Greeks, the Chinese, the Romans, the Arabs, and the ancient Chinese. The author is a physicist, but he speaks through the eyes of a historian. He carefully avoids the use of any equations, even when using a simple equation might make some ideas easier to understand.

Modern magnetism is treated rather hastily. Supermagnets get only a couple of pages, with almost no explanation as to what makes them “super.” Superconducting magnets are not mentioned at all.

The average reader who really wishes to learn about magnets would probably be better off consulting one of the many fine books on the subject, such as James D. Livingston’s Driving Force: the Natural Magic of Magnets (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), which, curiously enough, is not in the author’s list of references.

The book is easy to read, and it appears to be quite free of errors (although one might question some of the definitions in the glossary). If the reader is interested in a historical and philosophical perspective on magnetism, this book will probably provide it. – Thomas D. Rossing, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL.

(Science Books & Films, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, January-February 2006, vol. 42, no. 1, p. 28)


Physics in Perspective, Vol. 8 (2006) 353

Book Reviews

Alberto P. Guimarães, From Lodestone to Supermagnets: Understanding Magnetic Phenomena. Weinheim: Wi1ey-VCH, 2005, xii + 236 pages. $27.95 (cloth).

In his book Natural Magick (1589), the Italian physicist John Baptista Porta reports on one of his experiments as follows:

It is a common Opinion amongst Sea-men, that Onyons and Garlick are at odds with the Loadstone: and Steersmen ... are forbidden to eat Onyons or Garlick, lest they make the Index of the Poles drunk. But when l tried all these things, l found them to be false: for not onely breathing and belching upon the Loadstone after eating of Garlick, did not stop its Virtues: but when it was all anoynted over with the juice of Garlick, it did perform its office as well as if it had never been touched with it…l

That was good news for sailors, since “Sea-men would sooner lose their lives, than abstain from eating Onyons and Garlick.'' This is just one (of many) delightful anecdotes from the extraordinary history of magnetism - a science that rivals astronomy in its antiquity, its contemporary importance, and its central role in the development of physics. Guimarães surveys the subject in a wonderful little book (the text itself is only 181 pages, supplemented with a useful timeline and glossary, 20 pages of references and a complete index). He seems to have tracked down every mention of magnetism (except Porta) from the earliest written records (Mesopotamia, in the second millennium BC) to Gilbert's classic De Magnete (1600) - arguably the first real physics book. This occupies one third of Lodestone to Supermagnets; the rest is a whirlwind trip from Kepler (who apparently thought the planets were held in orbit by magnetic forces), Coulomb, Oersted (a close friend, we learn, of his namesake Hans Christian Anderson), Ampère, Faraday and Maxwell (along with many lesser figures), through the quantum theory of the structure of matter, to modern devices such as CDs and MRIs.

Guimarães is a professor of physics at the Brazilian Center for Physical Research in Rio de Janeiro, and a specialist on magnetism with a keen interest in the popularization of science. In a way, he offers us two books in one. 'l'he first is a meticulously researched and richly detailed history of magnetism, an inspired labor of love that will be of great interest to practicing physicists and especially teachers of the subject. The second is a qualitative account of the underlying physics, for “interested readers without a scientific background'' (to quote from the dust jacket). I found the first more effective than the second.

A unique feature of this book is its careful attention to quasiphilosophical issues. Guimarães emphasizes that the original fascination of the lodestone arose because - like the electrical forces associated with rubbing amber, but more dramatically - magnetism involves action at a distance. (On1y later - much later - was it realized that gravity is a third example.) Discomfort at this notion (shared famously by Newton himself led eventually to field theory, for which magnetic fields (made manifest by patterns of iron filings around a magnet) were the inspiration. In this sense magnetism is the true source for much of modern physics. l was surprised that Guimarães does not make the case for magnetism as the one relativistic phenomenon commonly encountered in everyday life - the argument (beautifully presented by Purcell and others) is just the sort of thing that would appeal to his eye for conceptual implications.2

As a popular account the book is less successful. Guimarães cannot bear to leave anything out, so we get a superficial paragraph or two on subjects like chaos theory, quarks, decoherence, and quantum computing. I'm afraid much of this will be unintelligible to the layperson, and in his haste he short- changes the physics of magnetism itself. For example, there is nothing here on magnetic monopoles, superconductors, or the Meissner effect, and I doubt many nonphysicists will get much out of his efforts to explain what a ''field'' is, or the structure of atoms, or spin, superposition, and exchange forces. A tighter focus would have made a better book. Guimarães scrupulously avoids equations, as perhaps befits a popular account, but I wonder whether it is really preferable - even for the mathematically illiterate - to write that ''there is a one-to-one correspondence in vacuum'' between wavelength and frequency, as opposed to stating the formula λƒ=c.

The text is generally free of errors, and the English only rarely betrays the author as a nonnative speaker. The editing leaves something to be desired - I was distracted on practically every page by the close-quote symbol, which is frequently set as an open-quote (or vice-versa; in one instance both of them are wrong). I enthusiastically recommend the book for anyone with a serious interest in the history of magnetism; ''readers without a scientific background'' will find it fascinating, but perhaps also at times confusing.

David J. Griffiths
Department of Physics
Reed College
Portland, OR 97202 USA
e-mail: griffith@reed.edu

1 Quoted in D. C. Mattis, Theory of Magnetism (New York: Harper &Row, 1965), p. 6.
2 E. M. Purcell, Electricity and Magnetism, 2nd edition (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985).


Chemical Heritage Newsmagazine

Spring 2007, Vol. 25, No. 1  |Reviews 

Book to Note
Alberto P. Guimarães. From Lodestone to Supermagnets: Understanding Magnetic Phenomena. Hoboken , NJ : Wiley-VCH, 2005. xii + 236 pp. $32.50.

Reviewed by Keith Nier

Neither a popular-science exposition of the current understanding of magnetism, nor a history of the development of scholarship on magnetism, this book is pitched at the level of good journalism about magnetic phenomena and recent magnetic technology. Alberto Guimarães reports on recent scientific discoveries, identifies the people most directly involved, and provides historical context. Details of research—experimentation, technology, or mathematics—are almost totally avoided. Once the reader accepts the book’s character it can stimulate as well as inform. It compellingly relates our widespread dependence on human mastery of magnetic effects and can serve as a list of future topics for research by historians of technology. Guimarães points to many recent developments, particularly in chemistry and materials science, that have received little if any scrutiny from scholars. CHF’s research into the chemical history of electronics is a good start in correcting this oversight, but more exciting work remains to be done on the aspects of magnetic and electromagnetic materials and phenomena set forth in this brief book.



Other books by the same author:

 



 
Mais detalhes aqui (More details here)

Last updating: 12.16.2010


Group of
Magnetism