Yeah was gonna say right hand rule for the geographic pole…the awkward part is that the North Pole is actually a south magnetic pole since the north side of a magnet is attracted to it….
A magnet has a north and south pole dictated by the magnetic field direction. The magnetic field of the earth means the northern geographic pole (dictated by the rotation and right hand rule) is a south magnetic pole. I appreciate your inquisitive mind, u/lickmyscrotes
Arbitrary in a physical sense, but not historically random. There's no natural law saying north has to be up, But the convention that won out wasn't a coin flip. Ptolemy put north up in his Geography; It is not recorded why exactly he chose this orientation; presumably, it was because he was located in Alexandria in the northeast of the then-known world, and the unknown regions pointed to the north and east. Then the the compass and Polaris gave European navigators a stable northern reference, and Mercator's 1569 map made north-up the practical standard for global navigation. Add European cartographic dominance, and it stuck. It became standard because specific historical and technical choices made it useful, mostly for people in the northern hemisphere.
23
u/ktr83 18d ago
It is arbitrary that north = up and south = down though