While walking around my living room trying to figure out what to write about for this physics blog, I decided to stop and yell at my brother to turn down the TV volume so I could think. Turns out that was a good idea because my brother was watching a show about the Earth's magnetic field. The show began by discussing how the Earth's magnetic south pole is near the geographic north. This is why we can use a compass because the tip of the needle is the needle's north pole and is attracted to the magnetic south pole of the Earth at the geographic north pole (that's a mouthful). It also said that in roughly 2500 years, scientists predict that the magnetic poles will switch. This is potentially dangerous because it could weaken the Earth's magnetic field which shields all of humanity from the sun's solar winds. Solar winds contain streams of particles flowing out of the sun at ridiculously high speeds and interfere with communication and navigation systems, impede satellite activity, and change the Earth's atmosphere. To show how the Earth's magnetic field protects us from solar winds by repelling and deflecting the particles, the show used our lab experiment with the donut magnets on a pencil to show how you can try to squish the two together but they won't touch because the same magnetic poles face each other. I though it was really cool that I understood what they were talking about, and had done the experiment - it made me feel like I was a good physics student :)
Now, I know we aren't supposed to use google for pictures, but I looked up the show and found a diagram similar to the one on the show explaining how the magnetic "shield" protects us from solar winds:
