how do you know which side of an unlabled magnet is which?

Question

my dad wants to know how to find out which side is the north or south side of a magnet in an unlabled magnet... how do i do this without a compass or a needle?

Answer 1

If you care, suspend it on a string and see which end points north. But don't tell your dad I told you. I think he wanted you to figure it out for yourself.

Answer 2

1.Hang a bar magnet with a thread and wait for some time, allow the magnet to come to rest. The pole pointing to earths North is North pole. But this won't work for other shapes of magnet.

2. Bring a small compass to one of the poles of the magnet and see, if it attracts north of compass then that pole is South pole. Be careful of doing this, any small magnetic or electric fields will effect the compass and will mislead you.

Wishing you a better luck....

Answer 3

Get a labeled magnet and put the North to one end of the magnet or the south it you like south better than north i guess but it doesn't matter then see which side of the unlabeled magnet is attracted to the the side of the labeled magnet then you know if you used the south side of the labeled magnet then the the side you have that has been attracted must be the north end of the unlabeled magnet.

Answer 4

Tie the magnet to a thread and hang it using a stand like a simple pendulum bob. The magnet after some time will come to rest after few oscillations. Face the sun and determine the direction south and north .The end pointing north is north pole and that pointing south is south pole .

Answer 5

Hang the bar magnet with a string attached to the centre. Let it ossicilate freely until it come to a stop. Then, u now know that the manget is pointing in a North-South direction but u still cant ascertain which pole is North

Look at the direction of Sunrise (Sun rises in the east). Place your right hand in that direction, and you will surely know that your eyes is looking at the North. Then you zero in on the answer.

Answer 6

All I can think of is to get a magnet that is labeled and see which end is attracted to which. Or if you know which way is which, you could use the magnet to make a compass and see which end points north.

Answer 7

A COMPUTER SCIENCE ANSWER Depending on the power of the magnet. See when you have current(Electricity) running through wires it creates a EMF(Electro Magnetic Field) and computers have lots of circuits(traces) in their systems. So it is possible for a magnet to cause EMI(Electro Magnetic Interference). This is why developers are careful when designing motherboards to keep the traces and wires far enough apart to reduce EMI. Hard drives work a little different. EMI is still possible but most likely, as mentioned above it will cause interference in the read/wirte opertation inside the hard drive with it's EMF that it creates.

Answer 8

get another magnet that has the poles (N&S) marked on it. like poles repel, unlike attract

Answer 9

GET ONE WHICH IS LABELED. GOOD LUCK.