Magnetism

Today, I went on to the next unit in my science study. Now, I'm learning about magnetism and electricity. For my first experiment, I made a simple compass. Compasses have been in use for thousands of years, and evolved much since their first iteration. Although little is known about it's origins, Flavio Gioia, an inventor from the Italian town of Amalfi,  is credited with inventing the compass. Nothing else is known about the early days of the compass, other than the ancient Chinese used a needle compass in navagation, by about 1000 AD.  Today, though I built one based on the original design used in navigation. It was actually very simple. First, you take a magnet, (in my case, a bar magnet) and put it in a bottlecap. Then you just have to put it floating in a bowl of water. The magnet automatically points north.. Here, I have some pictures of it in action.