Good analogy.Say you had a bag of sugar and you wanted to use all of it for maximum sweetness. A regular cup of tea would take about 20 sugars before the tea becomes "saturated". It just can't dissolve any more sugar in that volume of tea. No matter how much more sugar you spoon into it, it doesn't get any sweeter, the sugar just piles up at the bottom.
What you need is a bigger mug! Then at some size, you can dissolve the entire bag of sugar to give you the maximum amount of sweetness.
Incidentally, I made up the numbers. Probably closer to 100 spoonfuls before your tea becomes saturated. I also happen to know that half a bag of sugar makes a lovely cuppa if you brew it up in a bucket!
The steel needs to be thick enough so that all of the magnetic flux can be contained before the material becomes saturated. If its "too thin" the magnetic flux will saturate the steel meaning it just can't transfer any more of that flux within the material and the pull force will be reduced. Interestingly you can test this by holding another piece of steel behind it. If it is attracted to the original piece then some of the magnetic flux has "escaped" and your test piece it "too thin" to give you the maximum pull force.
Try it,
Say you had a bag of sugar and you wanted to use all of it for maximum sweetness. A regular cup of tea would take about 20 sugars before the tea becomes "saturated". It just can't dissolve any more sugar in that volume of tea. No matter how much more sugar you spoon into it, it doesn't get any sweeter, the sugar just piles up at the bottom.
You've made tea for a brickie then
That sounds about right (Assuming it's neodymium), I've got one about 20mm dia and 6mm thick that will lift a 6Kg barbell. The thickness of the magnet matters too, as well as the grade of the magnet ("N52" is the strongest usually available).The magnet is only 2cm dia, and 7.1kg pull force seems a lot