Why do adjacent poles repel when a bar magnet is broken?
Normally when a bar magnet is broken, the end that is broken will attract each other. A bar magnet is really made up of all the atoms in the magnet acting as magnets and lining up in the same direction to make the entire bar into a magnet. (These can be related to the spin of the electrons in the atoms)). It could be thought of to look like this: SN SN SN SN SN SN SN SN When the bar magnet is broken, all the bits are still lined up, like this: SN SN SN SN and the other part will be like this: SN SN SN SN So the closest ends of the part that are broken will still be opposite polarity, and so attract.
