Paperclip Compasses

In science, we've been talking about electricity and magnetism. Today, we made our own compasses using a glass of water, a plastic bottle cap, a paperclip, and a magnet. I got the idea from a Bill Nye video about magnetism (Season 2, Episode 1). My students had so much fun magnetizing a paperclip by rubbing it across the magnet for a few minutes and then trying to get it to float on the bottle cap to see if it would spin and face North. (We determined where North was using a real compass and made a label for our glasses that was facing true North.)

Every group got their paperclip to face North and were super excited that it actually worked. We talked about how Earth is just a giant magnet and how it has 2 poles: a north and a south pole. We also talked about how the true magnetic poles aren't exactly in the same geographical location as the North and South Poles. The north magnetic pole is somewhere in Canada while the south magnetic pole is in the ocean near Antarctica.