{"id":687,"date":"2014-09-03T09:37:42","date_gmt":"2014-09-02T21:37:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2014\/09\/03\/magnetic_fields_and_usb_sticks\/"},"modified":"2014-09-03T09:37:42","modified_gmt":"2014-09-02T21:37:42","slug":"magnetic-fields-and-usb-sticks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2014\/09\/03\/magnetic-fields-and-usb-sticks\/","title":{"rendered":"Magnetic fields and USB sticks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> Question: What does a rare-earth magnet do to a USB stick?&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p> Answer: (Having accidentally carried out this experiment by having both in my desk drawer at the same time): It sticks to it.<\/p>\n<p> I was rather relieved to discover that the data on my USB stick seems to be perfectly intact, despite the casing of the stick being stuck to the magnet for a while.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p> Actually, it shouldn&#039;t have surprised me. The mechanism for flash memory (<a href=\"http:\/\/computer.howstuffworks.com\/flash-memory.htm\" target=\"_blank\">see here, for example &#8211; it&#039;s a bit techy but you might get the idea<\/a>) needs very substantial electric fields (of order ten volts over a tiny length scale) to change anything. Once electrons have been put on the floating-gate, they won&#039;t shift for a long time &#8211; unless the right electric fields are applied to bring them back again. While waving a magnet at it will certainly create electric fields (that&#039;s Faraday&#039;s law), it isn&#039;t going to come close to changing anything in a flash memory.<\/p>\n<p> &nbsp;<\/p>\n<p> &nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Question: What does a rare-earth magnet do to a USB stick?&nbsp; Answer: (Having accidentally carried out this experiment by having both in my desk drawer at the same time): It sticks to it. I was rather relieved to discover that the data on my USB stick seems to be perfectly intact, despite the casing of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Magnetic fields and USB sticks : Physics Stop<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/physicsstop\/2014\/09\/03\/magnetic-fields-and-usb-sticks\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Magnetic fields and USB sticks : Physics Stop\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Question: What does a rare-earth magnet do to a USB stick?&nbsp; Answer: (Having accidentally carried out this experiment by having both in my desk drawer at the same time): It sticks to it. 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