"But what amazes me is that there really seems to be no background explanation available."

That should read: "But what amazes me HERE is that there really seems to be no background explanation available."

I think it is less, "scientists are lying to me because of X" and more, "people are smarter than me and I don't like that. These dorks that flunked me in public school science were targeting me because they didn't like my style. All them teachers were finding excuses to keep me down because they were jealous. Fuck y'alls!"

...or at least, pandering to those people. I'm from the camp that thinks these guys, the ones creating and profiting from this thing, know how to market and pander to their cult following. That they don't genuinely think magnets are witchcraft and "crows n' ghosts...whats up?", but damn well know their audience does.

I have a young earth creationist friend who seems otherwise reasonable. He has ADD and poor reading comprehension, i.e. he never reads books especially science books. So you can't have an on-the-level discussion about biology. Or religion since he hasn't really read the bible at all beside what they teach at sunday school.

Combined with the love bombing and protein deprivation by way of potato chips and soda, it's like the Moonies, but with greasepaint.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Grapes

Anything the ignorant and illiterate don't know is obviously sorcery, or the work of the gods. But this time they passed that information on to a quarter of a million worshipful fans, instead of their own inbred brood.

WHAT ARE THEY PUTTING IN OUR WATER THAT MAKES RAINBOWS DOWN HERE?

WHAT ARE THEY PUTTING IN OUR WATER NOW

yep.

FUCKING LYING SCIENTIST!

I got a hatchet with his dick's name on it!

Camonk watches the BME Pain Olympics!

Maybe he's in a different inertial reference frame!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetism#Magnetism.2C_electricit y.2C_and_special_relativity

Measurements of electric and magnetic fields in any system will be different for observers traveling at different relative speeds. The same thing happens for measurements of length and time, all due to effects special relativity.

However, the electric/magnetic and space/time measurements relate with each other consistently for every observer!

(Still, I agree with godot, the video is a crappy answer for "how do magnets work?")

This must be a subtle joke.

Dude....that is a cleaver. That is not a hatchet.

Which is why the people who think the internet is a good substitute for a formal education are full of shit.

Understanding magnetic fields behavior requires understanding fields in general, which takes a fair amount of math. It's not hard math but requires at least an understanding of vector fields and derivatives, and most people stop taking math classes before they learn those.

Understanding why some ("soft") permanent magnets lose their charge and others don't requires knowledge chemistry... I'm not sure what specifically but I'm guessing at least crystal structures. I don't claim to understand chemistry beyond what I got in HS, but what I know is irrelevant since I never cut an album telling thousands of impressionable kids that learning is bullshit so that I could make a few more bucks at the next soda shower festival.

The Professor in the video has videos on MIT's Youtube Channel. He's a Professor of Physics. So, they chose a good source, just not the right material.

Wikipedia is not a great place to help someone come to an understanding a of a thing. They gave up on trying to "Make Technical Articles Accessible" long ago. It's an ugly beast at times but it does serve a useful function in finding trivia. Trying to learn a new subject, on the other hand, presents certain difficulties, which I'm sure, by now, you've come to know.

That doesn't mean that real learning can't happen via the Internet. Like I mentioned before, MIT has video classes on its channel on YouTube. They are actual lectures, that take actual time to watch. More than this, there are videos from other uploaders that happen to teach middle school and high school courses. If you're a little rusty on your Algebra (and that can be forgiven), just search for whatever you are having problems with, say, quadratic equations, and you'll get helpful videos, some even with people speaking in an English accent, which you may or may not find pleasant.

There's a whole class, some 36 lectures, on Electricity and Magnetism, by the Professor in this video, on the MIT channel. If you want to educate yourself, I warn you, it will take a while, as most videos are in the 50 minute range. It might cut into your cat-video watching time but at least you'll learn new things and potentially become a more interesting person in the process.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MIT#p/c/C2CEECFD938FD494

If you look for it, it's out there, but not always. Take into account that the human race hasn't figured absolutely everything out yet. We've come pretty far, but there are still mysteries to this world, and new things are always being discovered. The internet age has spoiled many of us who want our knowledge right now, right this very second, and like the bratty children we've become, we must (re)learn that we can't always get our way, but if we ask nicely, we sometimes do.

OpenCourseWare is the shit and the MIT lectures are great. One neat thing is that if you are taking a class at another school that is using an MIT Press book, sometimes you can find lectures at MIT OCW given by the author. If you use iTunes to access the stuff then it's all on one place. Obviously what I said about replacing a formal education with the internet doesn't apply when you can get the formal education *over* the internet. I meant WP and other places where there are no consequences for publishing bad info.