Like the earth itself, each magnet has a north and a south pole. If it can turn freely, the north pole of a magnet will turn towards the North Pole of the Earth. The south pole of a magnet will be attracted towards the South Pole of the Earth. Confusingly, the Earth’s North Pole actually has a south magnetic pole, which is why the north pole of a magnet is attracted to it. For the rule is that like poles repel each other (push each other away), while unlike poles attract.
The areas of a magnet that have magnetic strength are called “poles”. When you have more than one magnet, like (or same) poles repel, or push, each other. Opposite poles attract, or pull, each other. In other words, the north pole of one magnet will click together with the south pole of another magnet, and two north poles will push each other away. These acts of attraction and repulsion are called “magnetism”, and the magnetic space around a magnet is called the “magnetic field”.
Unless they came marked with “N” or “S,” the poles of a magnet look the same. One easy way to tell which pole is north and which is south is to set your magnet near a compass. The needle on the compass that normally points toward the North Pole of the Earth will move toward the magnet’s South Pole. This works because the needle in a compass is actually a magnet! So the north pole of the compasses’ needle magnet is attracted to the south pole of your magnet.
Another way to tell which is north and which is south is by dangling your magnet from a string. When you dangle a magnet, it automatically turns itself so that one pole is pointing directly north and the other directly south, which is why we call them the “north” and “south” poles.
Remember in the intro when we said all magnets have AT LEAST two poles? Well bar magnets have two poles, so their magnetic fields are called dipole which means–you guessed it–two poles! But some magnets have more than two poles. In fact, some have four, or six, or even eight! (These are called “octopoles”– doesn’t that sound like a cool Play Station™ game?) Some celestial objects, including stars and planets, have magnetic fields, and some of them have more than two poles! We call these fields “multipoles.” Earth is a good example of a dipole magnetic field–we have one North Pole and one South Pole (with a few weaker multipole parts, but let’s not get into that right now).
Picture Credit : Google