I know that opposite poles attract and similar poles repell but if you had a small magnet that didn’t have it’s poles labeled, how would you figure out which side is negative and which is positive?
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One method you could use to determine this is to make a compass. Most likely your magnet is too heavy to do this but you can use it to magnetize something light like a pin or paperclip. This you can float on the surface of still water and it will orient itself according to the Earth’s magnetic field. The north pole is negative and the south pole is positive.
Remember that opposite magnetic fields attract and similar repel, so whichever end of the floating compass points north is the positive pole. You would then take your original magnet and see which end attracts that positive end of the pin or paperclip and that would be your magnet’s negative pole.
Of course if you were planning to use your found magnet to make a compass you have sort of gone full circle and needed to already know what you were trying to figure out.
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