If I wanted to magnetize a screwdriver, what would be the best way of doing this? I know it can be done by rubbing magnets across the screwdriver’s tip, but I would like to know a way of doing it with a piece of coiled wire and a battery. I have heard that this can be done with a car battery. — MS, West Virginia
Iron and most steels are intrinsically magnetic. By that, I mean that they contain intensely magnetic microscopic domains that are randomly oriented in the unmagnetized metal but that can be aligned by exposure to an external magnetic field. In pure iron, this alignment vanishes quickly after the external field is removed, but in the medium carbon steel of a typical screwdriver, the alignment persists days, weeks, years, or even centuries after the external field is gone.
To magnetize a screwdriver permanently, you should expose it briefly to a very strong magnetic field. Touching the screwdriver’s tip to one pole of a strong magnet will cause some permanent magnetization. Rubbing or tapping the screwdriver also helps to free up its domains so that they can align with this external field. But the better approach is to put the screwdriver in a coil of wire that carries a very large DC electric current.
The current only needs to flow for a fraction of a second—just long enough for the domains to align. A car battery is a possibility, but it has safety problems: it can deliver an incredible current (400 amperes or more) for a long time (minutes) and can overheat or even explode your coil of wire. Moreover, it may leak hydrogen gas, which can be ignited by the sparks that will inevitably occur while you are magnetizing your screwdriver.
A safer choice for the current source is a charged electrolytic capacitor—a device that stores large quantities of separated electric charge. A charged capacitor can deliver an even larger current than a battery can, but only for a fraction of a second—only until the capacitor’s store of separated charge is exhausted. Looking at one of my hobbyist electronics catalogs, Marlin P. Jones, 800-652-6733, I’d pick a filter capacitor with a capacity of 10,000 microfarads and a maximum voltage of 35 volts (Item 12104-CR, cost: $1.50). Charging this device with three little 9V batteries clipped together in a series (27 volts overall) will leave it with about 0.25 coulombs of separated charge and just over 3.5 joules (3.5 watt-seconds or 3.5 newton-meters) of energy.
Make sure that you get the polarity right—electrolytic filter capacitors store separated electric charge nicely but you have to put the positive charges and negative charges on the proper sides. [To be safe, work with rubber gloves and, as a general rule, never touch anything electrical with more than one hand at a time. Remember that a shock across your heart is much more dangerous than a shock across you hand. And while 27 volts is not a lot and is unlikely to give you a shock under any reasonable circumstances, I can’t accept responsibility for any injuries. If you’re not willing to accept responsibility yourself, don’t try any of this.]
If you wrap about 100 turns of reasonably thick insulated wire (at least 18 gauge, but 12 gauge solid-copper home wiring would be better) around the screwdriver and then connect one end of the coil to the positively charged side of the capacitor and the other end of the coil to the negatively charged side, you’ll get a small spark (wear gloves and safety glasses) and a huge current will flow through the coil. The screwdriver should become magnetized. If the magnetization isn’t enough, repeat the charging-discharging procedure a couple of times, always with the same connections so that the magnetization is in the same direction.