You are on an expedition in the Amazon rainforest but you have been separated from your group without a compass.
In order to reach safety, you have to get back to base camp which lies East.
In your kit you only have these materials:
Can you engineer a way to find your base camp through the dense Amazon jungle?
The aim is to try make a working compass from materials that you can find at home. The tricky part of this project is to work out how to make a needle float on water. You will learn about magnetism, navigation, magnetic poles, physics and forces.
A bowl (non-metallic) of water, a steel needle or paperclip, a tissue paper and a flat fridge magnet (rare earth magnets or straight bar magnets work best)
How and why the needle acts as a compass? Why does the needle get magnetised?
Leadership
Critical thinking
Problem-solving
You could do this around the kitchen table, outside in the garden if the weather is nice!
If you finish quickly then try to rest only the needle on the water surface without any floating device and see if it still works.
