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Magnets hold up papers on the refrigerator and are used in toys for children, but magnets are more useful than for just holding papers in place and entertaining us. Magnets have amazed people around the world ever since they were discovered thousands of years ago. People wondered how they work, and what force causes them to attract at their different poles and repel at the same poles. People have also wondered why the magnets in a compass point north and south. The word magnet came from the name of a Greek shepherd, Magnes, who discovered that a certain rock in the ground attracted certain metals. The legend says that the shepherd was herding his sheep when the iron nails in his sandals mysteriously stuck to a rock in the ground. When he picked up a similar rock and brought it back to his town, everyone thought the rock possessed some sort of magic and that is why it “loved” the iron. The rock that he found was called magnetite, or lodestone. Lodestone is a type of iron ore that has magnetic attraction, although rarely does it possess a strong magnetic field. There are many other cases of incidents that have happened with natural magnets to unsuspecting people. In one case, a miner had his metal helmet pulled off hi