Uranium magnet (2015)

Longer answer: Stillwell looked at uranium diantimonide, a uranium alloy. In Stillwell's experiment, this caused the material to shrink, a result of the rearrangement of the electric and magnetic fields inside the material. Stillwell rotated the USb2 samples inside the magnet, which also shed some light on its magnetic properties. There is a lot to be learned and, ultimately, applications to be developed from studying the interesting magnetic structures of materials like USb2. A material's magnetic structure is determined by the tiny magnetic fields of its constituent atoms. Depending on the material and how these fields are arranged, the magnetic structure may be identical to the material's atomic structure, the same but shifted, or nothing like the atomic structure at all. Many of the most useful, interesting and promising materials studied by physicists today, including multiferroics and piezoelectrics, share magnetic properties similar to those of USb2, so Stillwell's study will help to inform how people understand these features in similar materials.