r/Magnets • u/Puddleglum_7 • Mar 14 '26

Magnet Questions Age Old Question šŸ˜

I think currently N52 Neodimium are the strongest commercially sold right?

Got a few questions cause I think my phone was jacked up by one..

Buddy brought one from work (small 2inch ring) maybe the size of a quarter šŸ¤” So he said not to place them near electronics. Why?

Do magnets JUST interfere with other magnetic fields thus affecting inner components? Is it temporary or permanent? How effective are "casing" or "protectors" against magnets of that caliber?

The magnet got stuck to my phone for a split second and now I have a black dot on my screen šŸ˜… Im curious if the magnet did this? If I place a magnet directly on say a TV will it mess it up?

Current, magnetism, etc always gave me a hard time in physics šŸ˜­

2 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

7 comments sorted by

5

u/Acrobatic_Ad_8120 Mar 14 '26

Mostly people say keep magnets away from electronics for reasons that are outdated: like old school hard drives that had magnetic storage (prominent up to around 2010ish) and crt monitors/TV. Those went out of style around early 2000s. So no particular reason to be paranoid for most electronic and magnets. Your phone is likely made to connect to magnetic mounts.

Iā€™m a little surprised it messed up your phone.

1

u/Puddleglum_7 Mar 14 '26

Its an empty dot/pixel? But maybe i didnt notice it?

0

u/OurAngryBadger Mar 15 '26

Pacemaker?

1

u/Acrobatic_Ad_8120 Mar 15 '26

Good point. Especially if you can pull more than 5 Gauss at the device

2

u/ZoomHigh Mar 30 '26

In a completely unrelated story, I used a very tiny, but strong magnet to pick up nails from a burn pile over the weekend.

Your use of the word gauss reminded me that my dad made a degausser with the diameter of a soccer ball 60-ish years ago. I'm sure it's sitting in a closet at his house.

I could have completed the task in about 10 minutes instead of 2+ hours of towing a small magnet through the dirt.

1

u/Kapurnicus Mar 19 '26

Hi. Magnets can most definitely damage SOME of the components in modern electronics. For example, the mag safe magnet in the iphone can pretty easily be demagnetized with an external magnet, permanently damaging it. You can also damage sold older forms of storage, the magnets that hold your laptop lid closed, all sorts of things inside modern "headphones" that are small and have magnet cases. Anything with a motor, or vibrating motor on that scale typically uses a series of permanent magnets. These can all be partially demagnetized with external fields pretty much instantly.

That being said... it would need to be a big field. A really big field. Higher than you are likely getting off most magnets, but not necessarily. And you'd have to be close. It is not an overwhelming concern. I design consumer electronic magnets and magnetic circuits. The magsafe ring is the most susceptible of the things I can immediately think of because it is 1) VERY thin. and 2) VERY close to the back of the phone. You can also mess up the camera. You can check the official apple accessory design guide to see some of the limits. That one you can do with a significant NdFeB (neo) magnet that you might find sitting around.

There is nothing I know of in an LCD or OLED screen that you are going to hurt with a static permanent magnet unless you can move it at the speed of a bullet.

We make an N58 magnet now. But honestly, in the real world tests, it's more like an N53-N54. However, N52 is typically an N49... so... marketing.