An Attractive Visit to the World’s Strongest Magnet

Derek Muller of Veritasium paid an attractive visit to the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida, to experience the world’s strongest magnet. This magnet is so strong that it eclipses the strength of the Earth’s magnetic field by over a million.

For reference, the magnetic field of the Earth is 0.00005 Tesla. A fridge magnet is around 0.01 Tesla. MRI machines can get up to three Tesla. But this electromagnet creates a magnetic field of 45 Tesla, so nearly a million times Earth’s magnetic field.

Muller also explains how this magnet works.

So how do you actually make the world’s strongest magnet? Contrary to what I expected, you can’t do it just with superconducting magnets alone. The highest magnetic field you could generate with superconducting wire was nominally 20 Tesla. – That’s because superconductors have a limit to the amount of magnetic field they can withstand before they’re no longer superconducting. So the solution is to combine an outer superconducting electromagnet with an inner electromagnet made of ordinary wire.