Ad
related to: magnetic compass deflection
Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Magnetic compass adjustment and correction is one of the subjects in the examination curriculum for a shipmaster's certificate of competency. The sources of magnetic deviation vary from compass to compass or vehicle to vehicle. However, they are independent of location, and thus the compass can be calibrated to accommodate them.
Magnetic declination varies both from place to place and with the passage of time. As a traveller cruises the east coast of the United States, for example, the declination varies from 16 degrees west in Maine, to 6 in Florida, to 0 degrees in Louisiana, to 4 degrees east in Texas.
Magnetic dip causes the compass to dip upward or downward depending on the latitude. Illustration of magnetic dip from Norman's book, The Newe Attractive. Magnetic dip, dip angle, or magnetic inclination is the angle made with the horizontal by Earth's magnetic field lines. This angle varies at different points on Earth's surface.
A modern military compass, with included sight device for aligning. A compass is a device that shows the cardinal directions used for navigation and geographic orientation. It commonly consists of a magnetized needle or other element, such as a compass card or compass rose, which can pivot to align itself with magnetic north.
A compass is one such device, one that measures the direction of an ambient magnetic field, in this case, the Earth's magnetic field. Other magnetometers measure the magnetic dipole moment of a magnetic material such as a ferromagnet , for example by recording the effect of this magnetic dipole on the induced current in a coil.
The deflection of a magnetic compass needle by the current in a wire was first described by Hans Christian Ørsted in 1820. The phenomenon was studied both for its own sake and as a means of measuring electric current.
The magnetic field (marked B, indicated by red field lines) around wire carrying an electric current (marked I) Compass and wire apparatus showing Ørsted's experiment (video [1]) In electromagnetism, Ørsted's law, also spelled Oersted's law, is the physical law stating that an electric current induces a magnetic field. [2]
Robert Norman is noted for The Newe Attractive, a pamphlet published in 1581 [1] describing the lodestone and practical aspects of navigation.More importantly, it included Norman's measurement of magnetic dip, the incline at an angle from the horizon by a compass needle discovered by Georg Hartmann in 1544.