Most people are familiar with the basic traits of magnets, and know that they attract metal objects. Specifically, magnets attract objects made from iron, nickel, and cobalt. However magnets are used in many other ways due to the fact that they are able to effect electrically charged particles and electric conductors. Because of these properties, magnets are capable of converting electrical energy to mechanical energy, and vice-versa.

Some practical uses of this capability are found in the thousands of different products that rely on magnets to operate, such as loudspeakers, generators, microphones, motors, eddy current and hysteresis torque devices, magnetic resonance equipment, sensors, gauges, switches - etc.