Matthew Matauch
6S
4/22/18
What Happens When a Fruit or Vegetable Meets a Magnet
Introduction
Did you know that some fruits and vegetables are attracted to magnets? This is because some fruits and vegetables have iron in them. If you know stuff about magnets you would know that magnets are attracted to iron. You would think that the fruit or vegetable would attract because of the iron it but instead it repels because this kind of magnetism is called diamagnetism. I wanted to do this experiment because I like to play with magnets and I thought that this would be a cool experiment to do.
Hypothesis
I think that when the magnet gets close to the fruit or vegetable it will repel from the magnet. This happens because of the iron that is inside the fruit. If the fruit or vegetable repels from the magnet then I will know that the fruit or vegetable
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Make a torsional stand like in the picture below I used 4 cans and glued them together on each side. Then I put a wooden dowel on the top of it. I added a string hanging from it that held a chopstick that held fruit. I also glued the whole stand to a piece of cardboard to make it stable.
Lay out all of the fruit and vegetables you need to test.
Put one apple on each side of the chopstick and wait for it to balance out. Take the magnet and see if it attracts or repels the apple. Move the apple with the magnet 90 degrees and measure how many seconds it takes to move this distance. Repeat the last step with each fruit and vegetable. Record all your data.
Data and Results
Fruit/Vegetable
Iron MG contained*
Seconds to move 90 degrees
Apple, medium
0.2
60
Pear, medium
0.3
26
Peach
0.4
30
Spinach, 1