NCERT Solutions Curiosity Chapter 4 In-text Questions — Electromagnets

Book page 50 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.
Does electromagnet also have two poles like a bar magnet?
Answer

Yes. Like a bar magnet, an electromagnet has two poles — North and South, one at each end of the coil.

This is what Activity 4.4 shows. Hold a compass near end A: one particular pole of the compass needle is attracted to it. Since unlike poles attract, that tells you what end A is. Repeat at end B and you find the opposite pole — so the two ends of an electromagnet are always of opposite kind, exactly like the two ends of a bar magnet.

Why there are two: the field of an electromagnet is produced by current going round and round the coil in one sense. That sense is fixed, so the field comes out of one end of the coil and goes in at the other — giving one North end and one South end. Reverse the direction of the current and the two poles swap over, which is something a bar magnet can never do.
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