Modern United States quarters generally do not stick to magnets. This is due to the specific metallic elements used in their production and the principles of magnetism.
Quarter Composition
Modern U.S. quarters, minted since 1965, consist of a pure copper core clad with outer layers of a copper-nickel alloy. The coin’s overall composition is approximately 91.67% copper and 8.33% nickel. Before 1965, quarters were primarily 90% silver and 10% copper.
Neither copper nor silver are magnetic. Copper is diamagnetic, exhibiting a very weak repulsion to magnetic fields. While nickel is a ferromagnetic metal on its own, its presence in the quarter’s alloy is not sufficient to make the entire coin magnetic.
How Magnetism Works
Magnetism arises from the arrangement of electrons within a material’s atoms. In ferromagnetic materials, electrons have unpaired spins that create tiny magnetic fields. These atomic magnetic fields can align within regions called magnetic domains. Iron, nickel, and cobalt are examples of ferromagnetic metals because their atomic structures allow these domains to align, leading to a strong attraction to external magnets.
When magnetic domains are randomly oriented, the material does not exhibit a net magnetic field. However, when exposed to an external magnetic field, the domains in ferromagnetic materials can reorient, causing the material to become magnetized and strongly attracted. Other materials, like copper, have mostly paired electrons, causing their individual magnetic effects to cancel out, resulting in a diamagnetic property where the material is very weakly repelled by a magnetic field.
Why Quarters Don’t Stick
Quarters do not stick to magnets because their material composition lacks sufficient ferromagnetic elements. Modern quarters are predominantly copper, which is not magnetic, and the nickel present is in an alloy ratio that does not impart strong magnetic properties. Although nickel is inherently ferromagnetic, the relatively small percentage of nickel (8.33% of the total coin) combined with copper means the coin as a whole does not exhibit ferromagnetism.
For a copper-nickel alloy to become ferromagnetic at typical room temperatures, it generally requires a much higher nickel content, around 56%. The older silver quarters also lacked magnetic attraction because silver, like copper, is not a ferromagnetic material. Therefore, whether a quarter is modern or pre-1965, its metallic makeup prevents it from being significantly attracted to a common magnet.