Do spheres have poles? Couldn’t any point on a sphere be a pole and the point directly opposite to it be the other pole? If they don’t have intrinsic poles, are Earth’s poles human-defined?

310 views

Do spheres have poles? Couldn’t any point on a sphere be a pole and the point directly opposite to it be the other pole? If they don’t have intrinsic poles, are Earth’s poles human-defined?

In: 0

4 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

A spinning sphere has poles on the axis of rotation. On Earth these are usually called the geographic poles.

A magnet also has two poles.

On the Earth, the geographic poles and the magnetic poles are in *almost* the same place, and in casual usage we treat them as the same. Nicer compasses actually let you specify the difference, so that you can use the magnetic pole to find the geographic pole.

You are viewing 1 out of 4 answers, click here to view all answers.