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Name: Paulette
Status: Educator
Age: 50s
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: N/A
Question:
If you are in the Southern Hemisphere, will your compass point North?


Replies:
Paulette,

You may want to see my discussion of the magnetic poles that I gave as an answer to someone else's NEWTON question today.

Your compass will still point to magnetic north in most of the Southern Hemisphere, although the declination angle (angle from true north is very large in most of the Southern Hemisphere. As I describe in my answer to someone else, the magnetic field in the Earth's semi-liquid region under the Earth's crust is not nearly straight like the physical north and south poles of the Earth.

David Cook
Argonne National Laboratory


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