How Does The Compass Enlighten Us?

Have you ever thought of how does a compass work? Well, simply we could describe it as a device that tells you which direction you are facing. And it does so by using the magnetic field of the Earth. As we know magnetic fields have two poles: North and South. These poles are shown by needles in our compass, so the North pole needle of the compass shows the Northern pole of the Earth while the South pole needle shows the Southern pole of the Earth.

This all seems logical, from a geographical standpoint. But when we want to approach the compass mechanics in a physical way, a paradox starts to appear. We know that in magnetic objects the North pole attracts the South pole, and vice versa. Now with this information in our mind, how does the North pole needle of the compass is attracted by the North pole of the Earth? Shouldn’t the South pole needle be showing the Northern pole?

Well, this paradox is caused because compass was found way before the scientific community started to work closely on the magnetic fields. So, people understood that some kinds of metals were being affected by the direction they were facing at. So, the marine forces found a way that they could use these metals in such a way that they would find their direction wherever on the Earth. But years later, after the inventions of scientist it turns out that the geographically so-called North Pole of the Earth is actually the physical South Pole, and the geographical South pole is the physical North Pole…