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Magnetic Moment

The magnetic moment of a magnet is a quantity that determines the torque it will experience in an external magnetic field. A loop of electric current, a bar magnet, an electron(revolving around nucleus), a molecule, and a planet all have magnetic moments. The magnetic moment may be considered to be a vector having a magnitude and direction. The direction of the magnetic moment points from the south to north pole of the magnet. The magnetic field produced by the magnet is proportional to its magnetic moment. More precisely, the term magnetic moment normally refers to a system's magnetic dipole moment, which produces the first term in the multipole expansion of a general magnetic field. The dipole component of an object's magnetic field is symmetric about the direction of its magnetic dipole moment, and decreases as the inverse cube of the distance from the object.