Magnetic North

This week we have been learning about the cardinal directions, North, East, South, and West (or, Never Eat Soggy Waffles - our mnemonic device for remembering those directions!). Part of that study has been to explore using a compass to determine which way is north, east, south and west to us as we stand in Sargent Field. In discussing how a compass works, we gave students the background of our poles and magnetic north - the region in the arctic circle with enough magnetic force to pull the needle of a compass to point north.

The revelation of this type of power source opened a lot of questions and curiosity about magnets, so we brought magnets outside and had small groups of students experiment with them. They made a lot of discoveries about the properties of objects that magnets are attracted to. Many of them tested the effects of two magnets together and observed that when sides of the same polarity come together, there is a repelling force that pushes the two magnets apart. But when sides of different polarity come together, the magnetic force attracts them to join together.

Many exciting discoveries were made. Some students were impressed at the force of the magnets to attract each other even through another object (like their hand). One student was amazed to see that when he tried to place the repellent sides of two magnets together, one of them actually flipped so that the attractive poles could connect. Other groups of students were surprised to see that magnetic force can even overcome the force of gravity - when one magnet is lowered over another magnet laying on the ground, the magnetic force will lift it off the ground once the two magnets are close enough together.

You may have your young scientist doing some further exploring with your refrigerator magnets at home! Enjoy the pictures below of our inquiry of these tools.