Interesting Magnet Fact:
The ancient Greeks and Chinese discovered that certain rare stones, called
lodestones, were naturally magnetized. These stones could attract small pieces of
iron in a magical way, and were found to always point in the same direction when
allowed to swing freely suspended by a piece of string. The name comes from Magnesia,
a district in Thessaly, Greece.
For many years magnetism was just a curious natural phenomenon and its only
use was in navigation as what we now refer to as the mariner's compass and which was
probably first developed by the Chinese some 4500 years ago. The earliest mariner's
compass comprised a splinter of loadstone carefully floated on the surface tension
of water. Until the invention of the magnetic compass proper, travellers used to
carry small portable lodestones that they suspended freely in order to locate north.
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