Question

What direction would the north pole of a bar magnet point if you were to hang the bar magnet from a thin string?.

Answer 1

The end that is marked with ’N’ will point to the Arctic. The ‘S’ end will point toward the Antarctic. A bar magnet is ‘just’ a big heavy compass needle. The ‘N’ and ‘S’ marking are made to help travelers find their way around the globe.

Yes, it IS confusing to have the ’N’ end of a compass point toward the north axis of the earth. These conventions were well in place LONG before anyone understood that ‘Opposites Attract’. But now that we DO know that ‘Opposites Attract’ we are left with the unfortunate reality of compasses, bar magnets and the earth. There are gazillions of magnets and only one earth! So the ‘convention’ has been made that the magnets are labeled correctly! This means (unfortunately) that the Arctic area of the globe is actually the south end of the earthly magnet. The earth is a giant (but very weak) electromagnetic and the lines of the magnetic field point to the Arctic Regions which is why all out magnets point that way. The magnetic field line dive INTO the earth in the Arctic Regions and OUT of the earth in the Antarctic regions.

I haven’t used the word ‘pole’ here, because magnetic poles don’t actually exist (as far as we know). Every magnet is actually an electromagnetic with electrical charges in motion creating the magnetic field.