Permeability is the measure of a material's ability to be magnetized. Which term is defined by this measure?

• A. Permeability
• B. Conductivity
• C. Susceptibility
• D. Polarization

Answer: (A)

Magnetic permeability describes how easily a material becomes magnetized in a magnetic field. It’s quantified by the relationship B = μH, where μ is the permeability (and μ0 is the vacuum permeability in the same relation). The measure of how readily a material supports magnetic flux is exactly what permeability characterizes, so the term defined by this measure is the material’s permeability itself.

The other terms refer to different properties: conductivity is about electric current flow, susceptibility describes how strongly magnetization responds to a field but is a separate quantity from permeability, and polarization deals with electric dipoles in an electric field.