One way to make a compass is to stick a magnetized needle into a piece of cork and float it in a glass bowl full of water. The needle will align itself with the horizontal component of the Earth’s magnetic field. Since the north pole of this compass is attracted northward, will the needle float toward the south side of the bowl? Defend your answer.

Magnetism is a force that will attract a north and south pole together

When the needle is magnetised one end is magnetised as north, the other end as south

So how would earth's 2 poles act on this needle?

We don't just give you answers to homework questions on this site but we will help you along...

ChemMajor disagrees: I didn't find any information useful from this answer.

Then you haven't read the textbook from your course very much

@ Lowtax4eva you ever consider maybe the kid was taking an online physics course and has a lackadaisical teacher who hasn't invested much energy into helping their students understand the information in the book? So many of you people on these sites are unnecessarily demeaning and condescending to people who need help, or are looking for a detailed easy to understand explanation of something they're have a hard time with. It's people like you and every other person who treats these kids like this that they develop feelings of helplessness and drop out of elementary physics classes.

Look son, if the needle is magnetized, it's going to receive equal pull from both ends. Remember in your book where it says "all magnets have north and south poles"? That comes into play here, as the needle is tugged to the north, it'll also be tugged to the south. Depending on the strength of the magnet you can actually get it do some pretty cool parlor tricks as well.

Well, if I understood nothing of magnets, I would say that both of your answers were the same...

But both of them are helpful.

One last note, this thread was created on Feb 2009. It's not much use now that the asker is a little more than a year older.

Thank you for answering though :)