Making a Compass Lab

(Click here to see the movie of this lab!)

Purpose:

We wanted to find out if a compass that we made ourselves would point the same direction as the real one.
Materials:

2 flexible magnets,25x20x5 mm, with a 5mm hole in the center, 1 plastic drinking straw, 2 pieces of #22 coated hook -up wire 20 cm long, plastic drinking cup, one straight pin, one magnetic compass

Procedure:

1. First we needed to put the cup upside down.
2. Next we need to get a straw and put the pin half way through it in the middle.
3. Now get 2 20's cm wires and fold them in half and get 2
magnets. Put the end of the wire through the hole of the
magnet. Then fold the wire up the magnet so it won't fall off.
4. Before we put the wires with the magnets attached into the ends f the straw we made sure that the sides that will be facing each other attract and then stick them though the straw on opposite ends.
5. We get the built straw and try to balance it in the cup on the end of the pin. We took along time to balance the straw on the cup but we did it. When we balanced the straw it went around and ended up pointing in about the same direction as the real compass.

Results:

When we finally balanced the straw to the cup we tested the
straw and the cup to see if the straw could follow the real
compass and we found out that it did pretty closely.

Conclusion:

Because the two magnets had opposite ends facing out, the whole straw was like a compass needle and lined itself up the way of a real compass, pointing North and South