dielectric properties of metal is also shown to influence the behavior of the Casimir force as a function of temperature in the vicinity of the Curie temperature of the ferromagnet. On the basis of the above listed results we propose several experiments on the measure- ment of the Casimir force which should be capable to determine whether or not the magnetic properties influence the force magnitude and which model of the dielectric permittivity of metal is experimentally consistent. The structure of the paper is the following. In. Sec. II we briefly introduce the Lifshitz formulas for two dissimilar magnetodielectric semispaces and provide necessary information for the dielectric permittivity and magnetic permeability as functions of frequency. Sec- tion III is devoted to computations of the Casimir free energy per unit area and pressure as functions of separation in the configurations of two thick parallel plates made of ferro- magnetic metals. Some analytic results are also provided. In Sec. IV the configuration of a ferromagnetic metal plate near a nonmagnetic metal plate is considered and the Casimir free energy and pressure are calculated. In Sec. V similar computations are performed for the configurations where ferromagnetic metal plates are replaced with ferromagnetic dielectric plates. The dependence of the Casimir force on the temperature in the vicinity of Curie temperature is considered in Sec. VI. Here we show that the behavior of the Casimir force during the phase transition from the ferromagnetic to paramagnetic (in a narrow sense) state also critically depends on the model of ε of metal plates. In Sec. VII we present our conclusions and discussion. Specifically, we suggest a few experiments which could confirm or exclude the influence of magnetic properties of plate materials on the Casimir force and help to make a choice between different approaches to the theoretical description of the thermal Casimir force. We consider the configuration of two thick dissimilar magnetodielectric plates (semis- paces) separated by a gap of width a at temperature T in thermal equilibrium with the environment. Then, assuming linear relations between the electric field and electric dis- placement and magnetic field and magnetic induction, i.e. D = ε E , B = µ H , the Casimir II. THE LIFSHITZ FORMULA AND REAL MATERIAL PROPERTIES OF MAG- NETODIELECTRICS 5