The Physics of Falling Magnets in Stranger Things Season 3

Pretty neato, huh?Joyce: Yeah.Scott: And this field affects any charged object in its vicinity.Joyce: Just like my magnets?Scott: Just like your magnets.Joyce: OK, Why is nothing happening?Scott: Oh, because our field is stable. [Scott turns off the current and the magnets fall off.]Joyce: How...Scott: The magnetic dipoles tried to orient according to the field, but—Joyce: No, no, no. The basic idea is that an electric current makes a magnetic field. More loops (as in a solenoid) mean a greater magnetic field.Oh, it looks like Scott wrapped the wire around something like a metal lunchbox. So, if you just have a constant electric current in the solenoid, you get just a static magnetic field. The changing electric and magnetic fields are an electromagnetic wave.It's not completely true to say a solenoid makes an electromagnetic field. But let's move on.If you have a solenoid that makes a constant magnetic field, does it interact with any charged object? But what about a solenoid with a changing magnetic field and a changing electric field. Once this charged object starts moving (due to the electric field), there will be a magnetic force on it. If you have something like a solenoid that makes a magnetic field along with a changing electric current, you get a changing magnetic field. If you want a sizable field that reaches all the way across a small town, you are going to need crazy high electric currents.Scott Clarke didn't say you would need crazy high electric currents, he said "billions of volts of electricity." What does that mean? If you want 1 billion volts, that would be sort of huge—a spark about 1,000 meters long.However, the main point is that voltage isn't electric current and voltages don't make magnetic fields without electric currents.