Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2011 April 14

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April 14

Pseudoscience: suspended water

I know this seems ridiculous, but there is no harm in asking. This video on youtube (of course) has a person do a magic trick where he removes a cup leaving water in suspended animation. I highly doubt this as possible and is probably just a joke, but how did he fake it in the first place? Even faking this stunt seems inconceivable. Bugboy52.4 ¦ =-= 03:28, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Looks like CGI to me. The "suspended" water seems to be obviously added in post production; it becomes even clearer when frame through the video. There are certain frames where it seems rather obvious that the water isn't "sitting" on the desk. This sort of thing is relatively easy to fake with pure CGI alone. Modern computer animation is fully capable of placing an animated object in a virtual 3D space and tracking camera movements such that you can view the object from all angles. I see no reason why a sufficiently talented animator couldn't have done this. --Jayron32 04:38, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I found something for you: [1]. It seems you can find glitches in his animation; where for a few frames, the "suspended" water jumps illogically; in the middle of a normal pan, for a few frames, the water moves the wrong way before resuming normal motion. Its plainly an effect added after the fact. --Jayron32 04:45, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I spotted another glitch myself. If you watch the inverted image of the countertop behind the "suspended water", around the 1:45 mark, the image illogically jumps from one place in the "suspended water" to another, without a smooth transition. There's no reason it should do that. If you play the 2-3 seconds before it, and the 2-3 seconds after it, you can see what I mean. Just rock back and forth over that, and you see where there's an obvious glitch in his animation. --Jayron32 04:49, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Ha, very good! I wonder how many people will "try it". lol.Vespine (talk) 05:43, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

If I were going to fake this, I'd use clear gelatin or a carefully frozen cup of ice to get the basic form and then animate in effects to make it look more like free-standing water. a good afternoon's work, but easy enough or a bored high-school kid with time on his hands. no complex cgi involved. --Ludwigs2 06:10, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Probably a parody of this comic strip by B. Kliban that has been making the rounds on the internet recently. Flicker Link.

I'd like to see someone try that second one. APL (talk) 13:27, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't know, I'm not convinced about this. The image through the water seems amazingly believable, and above all... where does the water come from when he breaks the water cone? I'm leaning toward believing that there is some kind of physical transparent membrane involved. I see the slight dimming at 1:45, but that might plausibly be the effect of reflection hitting the videocamera's light meter. The shift to include more at the top of the image in the water cone matches a slight lowering of the camera. If it's a CGI fake it's pretty impressive! And the cartoon seems more a parody of this than the other way around. Wnt (talk) 05:03, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Spilling water across a surface isn't a difficult thing to animate... --Jayron32 05:19, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

1) Prank "Science" videos are very common on YouTube. They're practically a genre in and of themselves.

2) The match-moving techniques needed for this sort of thing were impressive and Hollywood-only a few years ago, but commonplace now.

3) The guy who posted this is a computer animator!!! Look at his other videos!

Also, the cartoonist I just linked died twenty years ago, he's not drawing parodies of youtube videos. APL (talk) 14:56, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

This reminds me of similar physics experiment [2] in which you turn a glass of water upside down, but the water stays in. If it is real perhaps it can be done by similar mechanism ? ~~Xil (talk) 18:04, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

FIBONCCI NUMBER

what cause the nature to obey fibonacci number? --78.38.28.3 (talk) 05:38, 14 April 2011 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.38.28.3 (talk) 05:37, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The fibonacci series is a type of power series; in that way it nicely models growth patterns. In other words, things tend to grow from themselves; one cell produces additional cells, which produce additional cells themselves, and so on. One way to model this is through exponential growth, but that only works where the growth occurs via individuals (i.e. one free bacterium divides into two, each of those divide into two, etc. etc.) When you have a situation where you have growth which is restricted by the new copies, for example the way a Chambered Nautilus shell grows is that each successive growth can only occur at the opening of the shell. The shell cannot grow in all directions, only in a highly constricted direction. This growth will not occur exponentially, since parts of the shell which have already produced new shell are now "surrounded" by that shell, and don't have any room to produce any more shell around them. It will only occur at the leading edge of the shell, and this is better modeled by an additive power series rather than a multiplicative one. Hence, the connection to the fibonacci series, the best known example of an additive power series. --Jayron32 05:57, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Point of clarification for the purposes of general education. Nature does not obey mathematical formulae. Mathematical formulae are human inventions that describe different aspects of nature, often without any real understanding of why nature might behave in that fashion. Never forget the basic paradigm of modern science: if your formulae say one thing and nature does something else, it's not nature that's made a mistake. --Ludwigs2 06:19, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

True, that's why I stated that nature is modeled by the fibonacci series and exponential growth. Those are human-created explanations for nature. I recall what a chemistry professor of mine once said... "Molecules do what molecules do, and if they don't obey the rules that we give them, that's our problem and not theirs." The same is true for all of science. --Jayron32 17:28, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

On the other hand, Julia Robinson looked at it the other way around, that the mathematics of numbers is "the one real thing". Sean.hoyland - talk 18:25, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The continued fraction expansion of the fibonacci number tells us that it is the number that is least good approximated by rational numbers. Depending on the physical context, this helps to avoid resonances. 95.112.246.93 (talk) 09:31, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

See http://www.evolutionoftruth.com/adm/contents.htm. -- Wavelength (talk) 23:17, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure spamming links to pseudoscience sites is appropriate here. Look, I am a professing evangelical Christian, and Jesus Christ is my lord and savior, and that website is still unmitigated bullshit. --Jayron32 05:18, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Ian Stewart discusses the reasons for the appearance of fibonacci numbers in nature in chapter 1 of his book The Magical Maze. It's as 95.112.246.93 says: by rotating each floret by the golden angle, the plant can pack them in maximally. --ColinFine (talk) 21:32, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

Cardiomyopathy

What is the meaning of the term "constrictive cardiomyopathy"? aniketnik 08:21, 14 April 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aniketnik (talk • contribs)

A number of useful definitions turn up when you google your term. Eg. [3]. Aaadddaaammm (talk) 09:02, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Pycnodeuterium

How credible is the existence of Pycnodeuterium ? My google hits all relate it to cold fusion which raise some extra doubts about it. 95.112.246.93 (talk) 09:39, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Palladium is well known to absorb large amounts of hydrogen (of which deuterium is an isotope) into its crystal lattice: see Palladium hydride. I'm not sure what the particular qualities are attributed to "Pycnodeuterium" are: is it just deuterium adsorbed into the palladium crystal structure? Because that absolutely does happen, even if it doesn't allow cold fusion. Buddy431 (talk) 23:29, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The article tells of "ultrahigh density deuterium lump" and does not mention simple hydrogen. As D is a boson whereas H is not, Bose–Einstein condensate comes to mind. Regrettably, the article does not even specify how "ultrahigh" the density really is. 95.112.143.65 (talk) 08:46, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Here's the journal article that it came from: [4], and the pdf of the full article where it is specifically mentioned that both regular hydrogen and deuterium are absorbed similarly. The fusion they're talking about is real , hot fusion that occurs in stars (where pressure forces the deuterium to form a metallic solid). The authors were exploring the possibility of reproducing this hot fusion that occurs in stars by forcing deuterium into a palladium crystal, essentially forcing the hydrogen (deuterium) into an orderly metallic solid state, due to the nature of the palladium crystal. The ideas and terms from the paper might have been misappropriated by cold fusion advocates, but it looks like the research is relatively sound, if not nearly as exciting as some would like us to believe. Buddy431 (talk) 16:53, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

physical education

what are the effects of physical activities in human body? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.59.1.50 (talk) 10:28, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

As from my experience, mostly Abrasions and Hematoma, but probably this is not what you are asking for. 95.112.246.93 (talk) 12:02, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

See physical exercise. --Tango (talk) 12:56, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, "Physical exercise is any bodily activity that enhances or maintains physical fitness and overall health and wellness." (from physical exercise). If so, then it is well different from what our (or at least, my) teachers forced us to do at school. At times I was so depleted I had to vomit. I remember a class mate left with a broken nose. But as the OP's question is probably homework, this is no thing to say to the teacher who is in power to have get your nose broken and get away with it. 95.112.246.93 (talk) 17:24, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Differences between conservative and liberal brain

Please help to expand this article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Brain Researcher (talk • contribs)

No, see wp:MEDRS in relation to single sourced studies and media reports. There's no literature review available on the field, the article ought to be deleted until multiple studies are available. Remember cold fusion? Fifelfoo (talk) 11:34, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

(after EC) The reference desk is a good place to ask questions or request information. If you have questions about the article in question, feel free to post them. However, as it appears that you created the article in question and are now trying to recruit assistance in its development so that it doesn't get deleted, my questions are "why should we expand the article, and with what?" These types of juicy, controversial findings are quick to grab the attention of news agencies (ABC, NY Daily News, Fox as cited in the article) or blogs, but I happen to agree that the subject is not worthy of its own encyclopedic article and should be merged into another existing article or dispensed with entirely until the results have been replicated and better understood. --- Medical geneticist (talk) 11:37, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, afd will be the right place for this discussion. BTW, I was not aware of wp:MEDRS when I created this article. I think since the study is covered by major news organizations, it meets WP:N. So the article can be renamed like Kanai's study of political orientation and brain structure?? --Brain Researcher (talk) 11:43, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

See [5][6][7][8]--Brain Researcher (talk) 11:46, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

This appears to be based on a single small study - hence is likely not-notable ubnder WP guidelines at all. Collect (talk) 11:49, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Comment: There are previous studies on this topic [9] So we have resolved the single study issue. --Brain Researcher (talk) 11:50, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

And the smallness of the study? Seems conclusively not-notable. Collect (talk) 11:51, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Please see these links: 1. study published in Nature Neuroscience by New York University and UCLA scientists in 2007 [10], 2. online survey by psychologists in 2009 [11], 3. study in New Scientist in 2008 [12] So we now have multiple studies. And it is not "the study", it "the studies". --Brain Researcher (talk) 11:57, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

AFD commenced. Fifelfoo (talk) 12:00, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps this information would be best summarized as a subheading under political psychology (which itself is a pretty mangy article in much need of help). That being said, the main caveats to these studies will remain a small sample size, lack of independent confirmation, and very little insight into causation. --- Medical geneticist (talk) 15:04, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The people who want this deleted will oppose it no matter what. Debating their issues is pretty much a waste of your time. Something I tried to include earlier, only to run into multiple instant reverters for the faith wherever I put it:^[13]

According to the ASA, IQ data from the "Add Health" survey averaged 106 for adolescents identifying as "very liberal", versus 95 for those calling themselves "very conservative". An unrelated study in 2009 found that among students applying to U.S. universities, conservatism correlated negatively with SAT, Vocabulary, and Analogy test scores. According to a 2004 study by the Pew Research Center, liberals were the most educated ideological demographic and were tied with the conservative sub-group, the "Enterprisers", for the most affluent group. Of those who identified as liberal, 49% were college graduates and 41% had household incomes exceeding $75,000, compared to 27% and 28% as the national average, respectively.

Wnt (talk) 20:31, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

xrays and vitamins

what effect if any would airplane xrays (the ones for checked baggage) have on vitamin supplements and their efficacy? 70.31.58.245 (talk) 11:51, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The short answer is 'none'. This discussion starts off with a good list of links to sources, though most refer to the smaller, lower-power scanners used for carry-on bags. This post is from a health physicist who measured the dose absorbed by checked luggage on a number of occasions, measuring doses ranging from 35-211 millirem; that's equivalent to between about one and six months' exposure to natural background radiation. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:36, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

thank you, that was an awesome answer. much appreciate your time. 70.31.58.245 (talk) 23:09, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Are there any trends in the half-lifes of isotopes?

If there is, how accurate can we predict an isotope's half-life that is undiscovered?--Inspector (talk) 15:05, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The island of stability discusses this a bit — theoretical trends make it seem like there might be superheavy elements with relatively long half lives. However it is unclear if this will be true in practice — when you start loading up nuclei to levels that we've never seen before, it's possible that other sorts of effects start to kick in (e.g. deformation of the nucleus, or quantum tunneling) which would affect their stability. My qualitative take away from the article, reading between the lines, is that there are trends, there are theoretical models, but the confidence in these theories being accurate is heavily qualified. Perhaps someone else can give a more informed answer... --Mr.98 (talk) 15:19, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

There are some very general trends. A greater difference in number of neutrons from the that of stable isotopes correlates with shorter half-life. One can see these general trends in graphs such as the one at right. For example, the half-life of undiscovered ¹¹He is likely to be shorter than the 2.7×10⁻²¹ half-life of ¹⁰He (but there is no guarantee). 148.177.1.210 (talk) 15:32, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

But how accurate can we make predictions? I doubt the validity of some isotopes listed in the isotope articles, after I checked out the references below, because it did not cite any other sources. It's like anyone can make a number as long as it looks reasonable. Are there any academic sources discuss about the formula and accuracy of the predictions?--Inspector (talk) 13:26, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

The figure at right links you to its source from its description if you click on it. For another interesting table see File:Table isotopes en.svg. Note especially the cute way that the "magic numbers", including especially 82 and 126 but also 50, sort of "pull in" the alpha decay to a point 2 above them (where emitting an alpha leaves a magic number). I see this huge block of alphas poking over onto the "wrong side" of the graph and feel as if somehow it explains the big gap between the spherical and deformed nuclei, but I don't really know enough about it. Wnt (talk) 02:11, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

But again it did not cite any reference but just saying like "In case no experimental

data is available, trends in the systematics of neighboring nuclides have been used, whenever possible, to derive estimated values"[14]. I am still curious about how they calculate and make the prediction.--Inspector (talk) 11:00, 17 April 2011 (UTC)

shivers down my spine -- are they endorphins?

Sometimes if I'm listening to a piece of good music (or something particularly touching) or make some sort of epiphany, I can feel a wave of relaxation, etc. wash over me. Are they endorphins being released? I'm not sure if it's purely nervous, because the effect lingers well after the initial stimulus. John Riemann Soong (talk) 16:17, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't know, but I think the phenomenon you describe falls under the umbrella of ASMR, "Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response". This term may help you find related information, though it doesn't seem to have much serious scientific study devoted to it. You may be interested in this recent thread on metafilter [15], which gives several audio and video examples that trigger this response. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:51, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The term "Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response" seems to be purely an internet phenomenon -- it gets zero hits on Google Scholar or Google Books. Shivers down the spine are also known as "chills" or a frisson (French for shiver), but regardless of what they are called, not a great deal is known about their physiology. They are clearly related to "piloerection", i. e. the hair on the back of the neck standing up, and it has been suggested that the response depends on opiates, but that doesn't seem to be proven. This freely available paper summarizes what is known about them, and this paper describes their brain activity correlates and discusses the evidence regarding what causes them. Looie496 (talk) 22:03, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Looie, for "not a great deal known" that paper you posted certainly has a lot of info. When I was in school studying this stuff, I recall it being considered part of the fight or flight response. Your info is better.OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 22:08, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Shaking all over deliberately and involuntarily. (videos) Cuddlyable3 (talk) 12:46, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Breaking neck

Why breacking neck is fatal while breacking other body parts is not?--89.76.224.253 (talk) 17:11, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Because the neck contains the spinal cord which carries signals from your brain to other parts of your body. If you sever the spinal cord in the wrong place, your brain can no longer send signals to, say, the muscles that make you breathe. That would be contraindicated in for those seeking a long life... --Jayron32 17:21, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

There are rather important things protected by the cervical vertebrae... — Scientizzle 17:22, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

First, breaking your neck is not always fatal. (See Paraplegia and Quadraplegia) Where it is fatal, it is usually because the neck is broken and the spinal cord is severed high up (C1, C2, C3). This cuts the messages from the brain to the body and essential functions, like breathing and heartbeat, are stopped. Bielle (talk) 17:25, 14 April 2011 (UTC) (Sorry to those who answered above. I didn't get an "ec", or I would not have written. Bielle (talk) 17:26, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Mike the Headless Chicken survived for a while. Cuddlyable3 (talk) 12:28, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Contrary to the impression one might get from the OP and answers above, it's entirely possible to break the bones of the neck without immediate injury to any critical structure, including the spinal cord. They're just bones, thus breaking can be separate from damage to nearby structures. Examples (this is only scratching the surface): extension teardrop fracture (PMID 21395397) and C3-C4 spondyloptosis without neurological deficit (PMID 20620981). -- Scray (talk) 03:14, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Yep. In fact I know a woman who broke her neck practicing a swing-dance move. She had to wear one of those metal haloes for, I don't know how long exactly, maybe a year or so. Must have been hell. But she came out of it all right, I think. (To be precise, I don't know for sure that the bones of her neck were actually broken, but that was my impression.) --Trovatore (talk) 05:30, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

sorry for the ignorance. What does 'ec' mean.190.56.107.170 (talk) 20:15, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

It (normally) stands for edit conflict - more information on that there. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 20:49, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

"This cuts the messages from the brain to the body and essential functions, like breathing and heartbeat, are stopped."

— Bielle

The heart does not require nerve impulses to beat. Indeed this principle is essential for heart transplantation. Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:59, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

People also do occassionally die from broken bones, or rather health complications that broken bones can cause, such as an embolism or shock. Googlemeister (talk) 19:26, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Why half-life is more important than total decay?

Although I may be wrong.--89.76.224.253 (talk) 17:14, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure I follow the question. Can you explain what you mean by "more important" and in what context you are asking? --Jayron32 17:19, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Maybe you're wondering why we measure the time for half of a sample to decay, rather than the time for the full sample to decay (the "full-life")? This is because atoms decay exponentially, which means that the rate of decay slows down in such a way that the "full-life" would mathematically be infinite. So the only thing which can be meaningfully measured is the time until some chosen proportion decays, and 1/2 seems like a natural choice for a proportion to measure. (I'd assumed that half-life would explain this, but it doesn't seem to address the question specifically.) Staecker (talk) 18:18, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The half-life article may be a little confusing because it seems not to contain a graph. this graph may make it easier to understand. If the half-life is one year, then it takes one year for it to decay by half, and then another year for what's left to decay by half again, and another year for what's left to decay by half again... So in two years, you will approximately a quarter of the original substance left, and in three years you will have an eighth of the original substance left. In ten years you will have 0.0009% of the substance remaining, and there may still be a tiny bit of stuff remaining after 100 years. This is why the "full" decay isn't something you can really measure. Note that this isn't some special property of radioactive decay, it's a property of statistics. If everyone flips coins and you discard all the tails, then half will be discarded after one flip, then half of what's left will be discarded after the second flip, etc... — Sam 63.138.152.135 (talk) 18:59, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

What is special about radioactive decay is that it is probabilistic, unlike e.g. Newtonian mechanics. In the coin example, it is not exactly half the coins that come up tails, that is merely the expected value. In a given toss of 100 coins, we may only see 10 tails. Half-life works well for macroscopic samples due to the law of large numbers, so the chance of seeing significant deviations from the expected 1/2 decay is vanishingly small. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:50, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Sam, I think you meant 0.098% after ten years (rounded to 2 s.f.). After 20 years it would be 0.000095% left. The total amount of radioactivity is the only important factor to someone exposed for a short time. See our article on Ionizing radiation for details. They wouldn't care about half-life unless they ingested of absorbed some of the radioactive material. We use half-life as a measure of how long the danger from the material will last. Dbfirs 07:27, 16 April 2011 (UTC)

Ionization of d-block elements

In the d-block of the periodic table I've read that when atoms of elements in there ionize becoming cations, the electrons are pulled from the highest s-orbital with principal quantum number n where n is the row of the periodic table in which the element is found, instead of from the d-orbital which, though it has a lower principal quantum number by one, has more energy than the s-orbital. Why aren't the first electrons to go the ones with the most energy? 20.137.216.64 (talk) 18:10, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The energies are all negative so by most you actually mean least and by more you actually mean less. Dauto (talk) 18:39, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

The reason is that the organization of the resultant ion is going to be different than the organization of the neutral atom. Don't think of it as "removing an electron", as though you come and pluck a little ball from its orbit outside of the atom, and the rest of the electrons keep going as though nothing happened. The electrons and nucleus system is always interacting, and any change at all to the system affects the whole system. Compare the following configurations:

• Fe⁰: [Ar] 3d⁶ 4s²
• Fe²⁺: [Ar] 3d⁶

At first it looks like what was done was that the 2 4s electrons were removed from the iron atom. However, it doesn't work that way. Electrons a) don't stay put and b) are indistinguishible from one another. Two electrons are removed. That is all we can say. The way that the *Fe²⁺'s configuration is derived is exactly the same way that the *Fe⁰'s configuration is derived: The configuration comes from the lowest energy solution to the Schrödinger equation for Fe²⁺. Pedagogically (that is, to teach this stuff to students) there are derived certain heuristics or mnemonics or "rules" to describe how to write the configuration correctly, i.e. the Aufbau principle, the diagonal rule, the periodic table method, etc. etc. These rules are merely descriptive of the end result of the Schrödinger equation for any particular system; they are not the real reason why the configuration is as it is. That's why there's all of the exceptions (like copper and chromium) that we have to create new, more convoluted rules. Solving the Schrodinger equation for any system has mathematics that is beyond the average first year chemistry student (indeed, at this point in my life, 15 years from when I learned this stuff, it's beyond MY ability as well), which is why all of the rules are taught to students. --Jayron32 20:48, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

Lugol's iodine

is "true" Lugol's iodine 2 % or 5 % is this it? http://www.amazon.com/J-Crows-Lugols-Iodine-Solution-2/dp/B001AEFM9Y — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wdk789 (talk • contribs) 19:56, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

You deleted my answer here: [16]. I don't know why you did that. To restate it again, you can find the answer for the composition of Lugol's Iodine at the wikipedia article titled Lugol's Iodine. It has a recipe in the article, so you can answer the question yourself. --Jayron32 02:58, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Magnetism

What creates magnetism I always believed it was the circular movement of the electrons that gave magnetism but I am not entirely sure. Also if magnetic monopoles do exist not if they don't why cannot we detect them why don't we see evidence them in everyday life if they do exist.—Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.38.96.241 (talk) 22:20, 14 April 2011

Magnetic fields are always associated with electric current, the effect can be described in a number of different ways such as Ampère's circuital law. A loop of current will give rise to a magnetic dipole, that is, a pair of magnetic poles. The motion of an orbiting electron amounts to a current loop, and even more strongly, the spin of electrons generates a magnetic field. Materials where these spins align in the same direction are ferromagnetic.

It is not possible to create a single magnetic pole, a monopole, with current loops. However, there is nothing in the laws of physics that forbids them from existing but no one has yet discovered any. Some versions of grand unified theory (GUT) require them to exist but no GUT has yet been generally accepted - it is still possible magnetic monopoles simply do not exist, and this is the reason that they have not been discovered. SpinningSpark 22:47, 14 April 2011 (UTC)