Look around your home or residence hall to see how many magnets you can find. Small packages of magnets can often be found in variety stores or hardware stores for hanging tools or other uses.
a. If you have a bar magnet, find its north-seeking pole by suspending it from a string and seeing which end points north.
b. Use this magnet, or another one whose north and south poles can be identified, to find the poles of your other magnets and label them north or south with a crayon.
c. Verify that two like poles repel and two unlike poles attract for any combination of your available magnets.
d. Try to determine which of your various magnets is the strongest by seeing over what distance it will attract a paper clip or other small steel item. (The largest magnet may not be the strongest!)