I was just playing around with some basic magnets. There were these small magnets, cylindrical, a basic dipole magnet. Like a bar magnet but instead a cylinder. And then I had these metal balls, roughly similar in size to the dipole magnets. The balls have no magnetic field and are only magnets when you stick them to a ferromagnet. Similar to a paperclip.
I stick on a magnet by the south end to the ball. Then I attempt to stick another magnet by the south end to the ball. Don't ask why I thought I could do that. The magnet was clearly repelled. But for some reason it was late and I persisted. And suddenly, the magnet sticks. Now I'm curious. So, the magnet repells, as normal, but then sticks once close enough to the ball.
It gets weirder. I force on 6 magnets by their south ends to the ball, and it gets harder to stick the magnets on every time. But, I then realize that the ball itself has an extremely powerful south field. Stronger than a single dipole magnet I was using. I'm not sure if it was precisely 6 times as strong, but it was significantly stronger. At least 3 times stronger than 1 dipole magnet, which leads me to think I somehow added the magnetic field strength of the different magnets. Back to the strange attraction issue, by the time I have 3 magnets on the ball, magnets must be within ~3mm of the ball's surface to attract. This gets smaller each time.
I tried to draw out how the magnetic field would look but find myself even more confused. It is as if the ball is south all around but north really close to the ball. And yeah, I wasn't able to draw that because I didn't know how to logically represent that as field lines. I drew closed loops, but in that illustration everything fits except the back end of the ball had to be both a North and a South pole. Any help would be much appreciated. My physics teacher didn't have an answer, so hopefully someone here has one.