Compass From a Coffee Cup

 Lets imagine that you have just bought your favorite cup of coffee. You're in bliss right? But then, you are so taken up with your coffee that you wander out of town, and you are now in the middle of nowhere and wondering what to do. So, you whip out that used coffee cup and make a compass!

This is a surprisingly simple project, and is very fun to do. For those of you who have children, this would be a good beginner's science project. This project can also prove useful (despite the silly scenario I gave you). 

Let's begin...

Step 1 What You'll Need

 To do this, you will need:
A coffee cup
A sewing needle
A magnet
Cork
Water

You will use:
Scissors
Tape

Comments

[ericscrum]

Yeah, it works pretty well if you can balance the needle properly. You could also find a needle that isn't made of steel. You can see that it works in my picture of the coffee cup compass alongside a regular compass. They both point north. If you want to read up on magnetizing metal, then you can look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnet

[sfcsarah]

 most needles are made of steel, and are really hard to magnetise using a permanent magnet. Does it work?