Did you know that compasses don\u2019t actually point true north?<\/p>\n
Compasses work by sitting tiny magnets on top of needles.\u00a0 When the needle is placed on a platform with very low friction, it spins to align with the earth\u2019s magnetic field and point towards a pole.<\/p>\n
If you have a compass, try holding it vertically so that the compass face is at a 90\u00b0 angle to the ground.\u00a0 The needle will point into the ground, towards magnetic north: the closer you are to the north pole, the smaller the angle between the Earth\u2019s surface and the needle.\u00a0 At the magnetic north pole, the compass needle will point directly downwards. (Here\u2019s<\/a> a video of a compass spinning randomly at the north magnetic pole.)<\/p>\n But the earth\u2019s magnetic field doesn\u2019t actually line up perfectly with the globe.\u00a0 In fact, the earth\u2019s magnetic field shifts around quite a bit! \u00a0The north magnetic pole is the point where earth\u2019s magnetic field points vertically downwards toward the centre of the earth. It\u2019s about 500km south of the geographical north pole.\u00a0 (The south magnetic pole is over a thousand kilometres away from the south pole).<\/p>\n In recent decades, the north magnetic pole has been moving faster and faster away from geographical north<\/a>. Eventually, the poles will flip, so magnetic north is in the south, and vice versa. This is causing difficulties for navigators in the Arctic Ocean, but the differences don\u2019t have much of an effect on anyone further away. In the Southern Hemisphere, our compasses should be pointing straight for a long time yet!<\/p>\n If you’re keen to do more magnetic science, here’s<\/a> a compass you can make at home.<\/p>\n If you\u2019re interested in mapping or earth sciences, you should check out the Bachelor of Applied Geographical Information Systems<\/a>, the Bachelor of Science (Geography)<\/a>, or the Environmental Geology major<\/a> in the Bachelor of Science<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Did you know that compasses don\u2019t actually point true north? Compasses work by sitting tiny magnets on top of needles.\u00a0 When the needle is placed on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1250,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1250"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.flinders.edu.au\/stem\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}