The Earth’s Magnetic Field

Background:
A compass is basically a magnetic needle that can spin freely and will line itself up
with the Earth’s magnetic field (if there are no stronger magnetic fields nearby). The
Earth behaves like a very large bar magnet with a north pole and a south pole as you
can see in Figure 4.
 Figure 4: The Earth’s Magnetic Field

Why is the north magnetic pole the south pole of the bar magnet?

This seems very confusing at first, but if you think of the ‘arrow’ end of the compass
needle as being the north seeking then it must be attracted to a south pole (as
explained in Magnetic Fields)

The geographic poles and magnetic poles are not in the same place, therefore a
compass needle lined up with the Earth’s magnetic field does not point to ‘true north’
but to magnetic north. The difference between magnetic north and true north is
measured as an angle and is called variation; the variation changes depending where
you are on the Earth’s surface. Ship’s navigation charts have a compass rose printed
on them which tells the navigator what the variation is for their particular location.

You can see in Figure 4 that the magnetic field lines enter the Earth’s surface at
different angles depending where you are. For example, at the equator the field lines
are horizontal to the surface (0 degrees), but at the poles they are at right angles to the
surface (90 degrees). The angle the field lines make with the Earth’s surface is called
the angle of magnetic dip. This means that as you get closer to the poles a compass
needle will want to align with the dip of the field lines and at the poles want to align
vertically with the magnet field lines. This is why a magnetic compass is virtually
useless at the poles – it tries to point up in the air!

To complicate things further, the Earth’s magnetic poles are not stationary, they move
around slightly so navigation charts have to be updated regularly. There is also
evidence from rocks that during the Earth’s history its magnetic poles have changed
ends! This happened most recently around 10 000 years ago – imagine if it happened
again (which it might), all our compasses would point south instead of north!

Ship’s Magnetic Compass

Background:
Modern ships are built from metal alloys and so have the potential to become
magnetised. In fact the simple acts of hammering, welding and any vibrations during
construction or repairs whilst the ship is sitting in the Earth’s magnetic field, causes
the boat to become permanently magnetised. The ship itself behaves like a big bar
magnet!

In addition to the ship having permanent magnetism, further magnetism is induced just
by the ship being in the Earth’s magnetic field. This induced magnetism may add to or
subtract from the permanent magnetism of the ship depending on how the ship is
aligned with the Earth’s magnetic field.

If you have a magnetic compass near a permanent magnet, the magnetic field around
the magnet is likely to be much stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field and therefore
will control where the compass points. As the ship is a permanent magnet it will
therefore have an effect on the ship’s magnetic compass causing it to point in the
wrong direction!

Ship’s compasses therefore have to be corrected so

they will point the right way. This is done by
placing them near other smaller magnets which
will pull the compass needle back into line.
Remember that a magnetic field is stronger when
the magnetic field lines are closer together, and
this happens near the poles of a magnet. Therefore
small magnets close to the compass will have a
greater effect than large magnets (such as the ship)
further away.

There are many ways of correcting a ship’s

magnetic compass, and making it point in the
required direction, but the main two are: a small
magnetic rod called a ‘Flinder’s Rod’ which hangs
vertically underneath the compass and helps to
correct variation and ‘Kelvin’s Balls’ which are
iron balls that sit either side of the compass which
can reduce most other compass errors. You can
see Kelvin’s Balls in the photo of the Aurora
Australis’ magnet compass binnacle (compass stand and casing) found on the ship’s
monkey island.