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The North pole of the earth is the north magnetic pole.
The pole of a compass pointing north is a south pole because the compass magnet is aligned to the EXTERNAL field of the "earth magnet". The north of the compass is pointing in the flow direction of the field of the earth flowing from north to south. You have to remember that the field you are embedded in is a field flowing out of the north pole down TO the south pole. The compass aligns to the flow DIRECTION meaning the north of the compass points south. The north of the compass would only point north if you could stand in the center of the earth. Then the flow direction would be toward the north pole. Hope this helps,
[Moderator Note: Actually, this is the other way around--the geographic north pole is actually a magnetic south pole. A nice page with respect to this is: http://www.execpc.com/~rhoadley/magpole.htm ]
Adrian wrote:
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