IEEE Microwave Magazine, July 2023Microwave Surfing

The Annual QuizRajeev Bansal24mmm07-microsurf-opener2-3264344IMAGE LICENSED BY INGRAM PUBLISHINGAs New Zealander geophysicist Gillian Turner’s book North Pole, South Pole: The Epic Quest to Solve the Great Mystery of Earth’s Magnetism [1] shows, our planet’s magnetic properties have intrigued people since ancient times. This quiz offers a quick tour of the early history of geomagnetism. It is now time to grab a pen and test your own knowledge of this fascinating subject! Google and ChatGPT are not allowed. The answers appear elsewhere in this issue.Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this column appeared originally in the June 2023 issue of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine.

The solar wind (energetic charged particles from the sun) and cosmic rays are safely deflected by Earth’s…

ozone layer
magnetosphere
ionosphere
none of the above.

2)

The sun is strongly magnetic and (in addition to Earth) so is/are the following planet(s)…

Venus, Mars, and Mercury
Pluto
Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus
none of the above.

3)

The earliest ideas on the nature of magnetism are attributed to the Greek philosopher…

Aristotle
Pythagoras
Thales
none of the above.

4)

The earliest recorded use of the compass was in the first century AD in …

India
China
Egypt
none of the above.

5)

Englishman Alexander Neckam, writing in the late 12th century, reported the use of a magnetic compass for navigation by European sailors. This was ____ Marco Polo’s visit to China.

before
after
much later than
none of the above

6)

The ____ Medal of the European Geosciences Union honors the 13th-century French scholar who discovered the difference between the north and south poles of a magnet and the polarity-based magnetic attraction/repulsion.

Petrus Peregrinus
William Gilbert
Andre-Marie Ampere
none of the above.

7)

The inclination (the “dip” of a freely suspended magnetic needle, which depends on the latitude) was described in 1581 by the English hydrographer ____.

Georg Hartmann
Robert Norman
Francis Bacon
none of the above

8)

The American Geophysical Union held a special session at its Spring 2000 meeting to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of De Magnete (On the Magnet) by ____.

Wilhelm Eduard Weber
Carl Friedrich Gauss
William Gilbert
none of the above.

9)

In the final chapter of Book I of the multivolume treatise De Magnete, the author presents his famous conclusion that the Earth ____.

owes its magnetism to moving charges
has a lodestone core
is a great magnet
none of the above.

10)

The author of De Magnete was aware of declination (the deviation of the compass needle from the geographical north). We know now that this declination ____.

is time invariant.
is location independent
varies with both time and place
none of the above.

Answers to the Annual Quiz

All the answers are derived from [1] and [2].

b) Magnetosphere (the region around Earth dominated by our planet’s magnetic field).
c) Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, and Uranus.
c) Thales (circa 624–546 BC) was a contemporary of Pythagoras. His own writings do not survive, but his hypothesis (“magnet has a soul because it moves the iron”) was reported later by Aristotle (384–322 BC).
b) China. (It was apparently also used in the ancient art of feng shui.)
a) Before. (Marco Polo did not visit China until 1275, almost a century after Neckam’s descriptions of the magnetic compass for navigation.)
a) Petrus Peregrinus.
b) Robert Norman.
c) William Gilbert.
c) Is a great magnet. (The original Latin was “Magnus magnes ipse est globus terrestris.”)
c) Varies with both time and place.

References

[1] G. Turner, North Pole, South Pole: The Epic Quest to Solve the Great Mystery of Earth’s Magnetism. New York, NY, USA: The Experiment, 2011.

[2] R. Bansal, From ER to E.T.: How Electromagnetic Technologies Are Changing Our Lives. New York, NY, USA: Wiley-IEEE Press, 2017.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2023.3264344

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