A few years ago I went to a museum, where there was a board with 2 bar magnets, on a pole each so they could rotate.
If you rotated them so the lined up with the same poles (N) facing each other, they'd repel spinning until the south poles lined up, then they'd repel and spin so the north poles lined up and so. This was without any extra help, once you lined them up they would just keep spinning by their selves. How exactly is this possible that the 2 magnets kept producing kinetic energy?
[Physics] How do 2 magnets spin by themselves if positioned precisely
electromagnetismmagnetic fields
Related Solutions
Here are from wikipedia drawings of the field lines of two magnets in two orientations, like-like, like-unlike .
North pole to north pole
North pole to south pole.
The lines distort but do not intersect.
These field lines are solutions of the formal Maxwell differential equations. Differential equations do not give discontinuous solutions, as would be the case if two lines crossed. Discontinuities in the solutions when smooth boundary conditions exist are not possible, as in the drawings. Discontinuities can exist as singularities, which can only exist at the source of the field. The field lines themselves follow smooth functions away from sources.
Mawell's equations have been continually validated by an enormous number of experiments and applications and thus we trust the descriptions of nature that the solutions give.
The flux line direction at a point $P$ is defined (by convention) as the direction pointed by the N end of an infinitesimal "test compass" placed at $P$. There is no "magnetic goodness" emanating from N and sucked into S.
Best Answer
They are not producing energy; their movement is a result of the work you've put during setting same poles to face each other. They will eventually stop, since this energy is dissipated by friction on their fixings and at some point their momentum will decrease to the point it will be not enough to push the system through energy pick when the same poles are nearby. After this, they will relax to their energy optimum, so probably into configuration when different poles are facing each other.