Thin Fridge Magnets Were Designed for Particle Accelerators

If you don't currently have a magnet on your refrigerator, there's a good chance you once did, or at the very least know someone who does. Specifically, one of those flat, ultra-thin magnets that are frequently utilised as promotional materials for companies. They are widely used by pizzerias to make it simple for customers to maintain phone numbers on hand.

They are inexpensive to create and special in that just one side of each one is magnetic. Everything we know about magnets, which states that they have opposing poles, is directly contradicted by this. And even though they make excellent advertisements, they were first intended for use in particle accelerators.

A Halbach array is what is used to describe these magnets. In order to focus laser, electron, and particle beams, physicist Klaus Halbach created these in the 1980s. They only have a substantial field on one side, and none on the other. This type of magnet is also also employed in applications such as maglev trains, which enable the train to effectively float on the single-sided magnetic field produced by the Halbach array.