What is a magnet in simple chemistry terms

I'm almost done with general chemistry 1 and I was really excited to finally learn what a magnet is when I saw a chapter on it in the table of contents, only it turns out that my text book has that chapter removed because apparently my college has something against magnets. I don't know. Anyways, I'm disappointed. I want to know what a magnet from the atomic perspective. Keep in mind that all I've taken so far is gen chem 1. So please explain it in a way that I can understand. Searching for the answer online, all I found were equations and talking about magnetic fields. That doesn't tell me what a magnetic field is in the first place. If you are really into chemistry, can you also tell me if light behaves like particles, is it made up of particles? How are those particles related to protons, neutrons, electrons, and quartz? Do we just not know the answer to that? Thanks for your help!

You first need to come to grips with the idea that the nature of atoms and atom-sized particles is not the same as the ones you are accustomed to observing. At the atomic scale there is not a clear distinction between matter and energy. As I'm fond of pointing out, electrons behave more like peanut butter and less like peanuts. Electrons are not nice, neat little particles, and light is not just a series of waves. At the atomic scale electrons and light share many similar properties. Depending upon how we look at them, they either appear as particles or as waves, or as something in between. This is why chemists and physicists tend to use equations to describe light and atom-sized particles -- because the usual models of matter and energy don't really apply, and the equations do.

When it comes to magnets there are really three kinds of materials that you need to be aware of. First there are the common permanent magnets that hang on the refrigerator and that you are familiar with. Permanent magnets usually contain iron and a few other elements that are ferromagnetic, like cobalt or nickel. Then we have the rare-earth permanent magnets that are a mixture of rare earth metals and ferromagnetic metals. Permanent magnets contain small clusters of atoms, called domains, that align themselves with other domains so that all their north poles are pointed in one direction, and all their south poles are pointed in the opposite direction. Then we have paramagnetic materials. These don't form permanent magnets, but are attracted to magnetic fields. These elements or compounds have one or more unpaired electrons. And last we have paramagnetic substances. These are weakly repelled by magnetic fields. Paramagnetic materials have all of their electrons paired.

magnetic materials have ***UNPAIRED ELECTRONS*** is the most key point
if the unpaired electron is aligned with the unpaired electron of a neighbor then the energy is lower and thus you form domains (regions) where these electrons are aligned.


light is both a particle (photon) with wave properties