ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Pulsed field magnet

Imagine you are playing with a toy magnet and you want to make it stronger. One way to do this is by turning the magnet on and off very quickly, over and over again. This is essentially what a pulsed field magnet does, but on a much larger scale.

A pulsed field magnet is a big magnet that can be turned on and off really quickly. This creates a magnetic field that is much stronger than a static magnet, and it can be used for all sorts of cool experiments and research.

Scientists use pulsed field magnets to study things like superconductivity (a property of certain materials that allows them to conduct electricity with zero resistance), magnetism in materials under extreme conditions (like very cold or very hot temperatures), and even the behavior of matter at the atomic level.

One way to think about a pulsed field magnet is like a giant light switch. When you flip the switch on, the magnet turns on and creates a powerful magnetic field. When you flip it off, the magnet stops creating the field.

But instead of flipping the switch on and off manually like you would with a regular light, pulsed field magnets use special electronic equipment to turn the magnet on and off very quickly, sometimes in just a fraction of a second.

So that's what a pulsed field magnet is: a really strong magnet that can be turned on and off really quickly to create special magnetic fields for scientists to study all sorts of interesting things.