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Iron, but they don't stick to most stainless steels. There is magnetic stainless which magnets wil stick to and it rusts easily. Magnets stick to other magnets at opposite poles.
A ferromagnet (the type that i assume you are talking about, as it is most common) will stick to ferromagnetic materials that are below their Curie Temperature. This can include alloys of these materials too, depending on how they are manufactured.
If the field strength of the magnet is increased considerably (say, by supercooling) to the equivalent of many times the earth's field (I do not remember the numbers offhand) it can generate a localized field that will attract/repel nearly anything. There was a neat demonstration of a small (presumably non-ferrous!) frog being completely suspended.
If the field strength of the magnet is increased considerably (say, by supercooling) to the equivalent of many times the earth's field (I do not remember the numbers offhand) it can generate a localized field that will attract/repel nearly anything. There was a neat demonstration of a small (presumably non-ferrous!) frog being completely suspended.
The frog levitation video you were talking about was performed by a professor of mine at the university of Bristol, Sir Michael Berry, and he won the IgNobel prize for the research. Nearly all materials exhibit some form of magnetism called diamagnetism. They are of course not magnetic in every day situations, but if you apply a strong enough magnetic field they will become magnetic and this is what the frog exhibits. The research was of course made possible by the creation of a remarkably strong magnetic field of several Tesla.
As we humans are mostly water like the frog, it should be possible to levitate a human, but such strong magnetic fields have not been created in an area large enough to accomodate a human.. yet.
He's a top bloke and it's great to be studying in a department with many physicists of his caliber.
More info (and more levitating objects by the same technique) here: HFML, Levitation
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