Gyromagnetic ratio

The gyromagnetic ratio is a fancy way of saying how much a particle likes to spin around in a magnetic field. Imagine you’re playing with a toy top – the faster you spin it, the more it likes to stay upright because of forces acting on it. Similarly, when we put a particle like an electron or atom in a magnetic field, it starts to spin around because of forces acting on it.

The gyromagnetic ratio is like the speed the top spins around at – it tells us how much the particle wants to spin around when it’s in a magnetic field. Some particles have a higher gyromagnetic ratio, which means they like to spin around faster, while others have a lower gyromagnetic ratio, which means they spin around slower. Scientists use the gyromagnetic ratio to study particles by measuring how they respond to magnetic fields.