Magnetism

Magnetic field of the Earth

Ever seen a diagram of the geomagnetic field that looks something like this?

bad diagram of earth magnetic field showing field lines emanating from the poles and not intersecting the surface, with a superimposed bar magnet that has "N" at the top

Some search engine is going to scrape this and show it as an ordinary result, but that’s on anyone who (re)uses it without consulting the source. I’m almost tempted to CC0[1] it for maximum chaos.

While I might technically be exaggerating, every deficiency of this diagram is something I have legitimately seen on the world wide web. In summary:

  1. Field lines converge at poles

  2. Those poles are the geographic poles

  3. Field emanates from pole marked ‘S’ and converges at ‘N’

  4. Field is parallel …

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