North pole vs magnetic North pole vs geomagnetic North pole
In: Physics
North pole: if you stuck a giant cocktail stick through the Earth, and it was spinning around on the stick, the ends would be poking out the North and South poles.
The magnetic North pole is the point on the Earth’s surface where its magnetic field is going straight down (rather than crossing the surface at a different angle, or not crossing at all). The magnetic South pole is where the field goes straight up.
The geomagnetic North pole is where the magnetic North pole would be if, instead of the Earth’s real magnetic field we pretended it had a giant bar magnet in it, and placed the magnet to get a magnetic field as close to the Earth’s actual magnetic field as possible.
[Diagram](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Geographical_and_Magnetic_Poles.png) – the Green As are for the rotational poles; where the Earth spins. The Blue Bs are the geomagnetic poles, if we pretended there was a giant bar magnet in the middle of the Earth. The Purple Cs are the actual magnetic poles, where the magnetic fields go straight up or down.
The current South magnetic pole is probably the furthest out; it is in the ocean between Australia and Antarctica at about 64 degrees South, making it North of the Antarctic Circle, and about as far from the actual South pole as Iceland is from the North pole
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