A didactic proposal for the study of magnetic interaction between magnets and some epistemological considerations

Abstract The force of magnetic interaction between magnets is a curious effect, which attracts the attention of people of the most varied ages. If, on the one hand, its description is too tricky to be presented in basic physics courses, on the other, restricting some aspects of the magnets, the force admits a behavior described analytically by an exponential decay with the distance between the magnets. We present, then, a sequence of experiments that allows us to estimate the repulsion force between pairs of equal cylindrical magnets. Forgetting for a while this pragmatic side, we also discuss how a magnetic field admits its representation as an axial vector field.