Do magnets attract electrons? I don't think so, but maybe in certain cases they can be? I guess it would depend on what direction the velocity and magnetic field is in so that the force acting on the charge is towards one of the poles but I haven't tried that yet.
If an electron is shot between a north pole and a south pole, is it attracted to any of them? Well the resulting force would either be into or out of the page (right?) so it wouldn't be attracted to any. Can anyone confirm/explain this if I'm wrong?
Best Answer
The magnetic part of Lorentz' force law, which describes the force electric and magnetic fields exert on a point charge, is given by
$$\vec{F}=q\,\dot\;\,\vec{v}\times\vec{B},$$
where $q$ is charge, $\vec{v}$ is the velocity of the moving particle and $\vec{B}$ is the magnetic field. As you can see, the particle has to move in order to be affected by the latter. Furthermore, we can see that the force is given by a cross product between velocity and magnetic field. This means that the resulting force points in a perpendicular direction with respect to the plane spanned by the vectors which are multiplied.
Applying this logic to your example of an electron and two poles, the answer is that it will not be directed towards any of the two, as you have correctly assumed.