Determine whether each of the following statements about diamagnetism and paramagnetism is true or false:

a. A diamagnetic substance is weakly repelled from a magnetic field.

b. A substance with unpaired electrons will be diamagnetic.

c. A paramagnetic substance is attracted to a magnetic field.

d. The O2 molecule is paramagnetic.

Video transcript

Welcome back everyone. What term describes a substance that has unpaired electrons aligned in a specific direction. We're going to visualize the following scenario where we have an atom which I'll represent as a box. Say this atom has a total of four electrons where we would observe the first two electrons being paired up representing a filled sphere, whereas the remaining two electrons are unpaired. So we would fill in this halfway to represent the unpaired electrons because of the presence of unpaired electrons, we now have this arrow that we will show going from the field or rather paired electron sphere that is filled to the half filled sphere representing the unpaired electrons. And that arrow we would express as a net magnetic moment. So there's a net magnetic moment observed from the filled sphere to the hollow sphere. What we have depicted is a description of a paramagnetic substance. And that is again due to the presence of unpaired electrons note that those unpaired electrons are going to be attracted to a magnetic field which creates that net magnetic moment. Now, we would observe a second scenario where we have an atom again expressed by a box in which the electrons we'll say there's about four for this atom, all four of the electrons are paired. So we would observe spheres that are fully filled, representing the paired electrons making up this atom. And so because there is a lack of unpaired electrons, all electrons are paired expressed by the filled spheres, there is no net magnetic moment. And so upon application of a magnetic field, there will be no attraction. And so this scenario is characteristic of a diamagnetic substance, which is characterized again by all paired electrons, no unpaired electrons at all. So due to the lack of the attraction to a magnetic field, because there is no net magnetic moment, diamagnetic substances will repel magnets. Whereas paramagnetic substances attract magnets. And based on what we've outlined, the term that describes a substance that has unpaired electrons aligned in a specific direction would be a paramagnetic substance or just paramagnetic alone. And that is our final answer. I hope that this made sense and let us know if you have any questions.