Why a broken magnet still has two poles
A bar magnet’s north and south poles are not separate ingredients stored at opposite ends. Magnetism comes from the behavior of electrons inside its material. In many magnets, tiny magnetic contributions from electrons line up in the same direction, creating a larger magnetic effect throughout the object.
That alignment produces a magnetic field: the region where magnetic forces can be detected. Outside the magnet, field lines are drawn from north toward south. Inside it, they continue back from south toward north, forming closed loops. The lines are a way to map the field, not physical threads; the key point is that the field does not simply begin at a north pole and terminate at a south pole.
What happens at the break
When a magnet snaps, the break creates new ends in the material, but it does not divide the underlying magnetic alignment into a north-only half and a south-only half. Each piece retains an aligned arrangement of microscopic magnetic contributions, so each develops its own north and south ends. The smaller fragments have weaker overall magnetic effects, but they remain magnets.
This is why cutting or crushing a conventional magnet keeps producing paired poles rather than isolating one. Physicists call a hypothetical isolated magnetic pole a magnetic monopole. No confirmed magnetic monopole has been observed, and ordinary magnets do not provide one just by being broken.
The practical consequence is simple: a magnet’s poles belong to its field and internal alignment as a whole, not to two detachable caps. Snap it in half, and the cut surfaces become the new meeting point of two smaller, complete magnetic loops.
