When I was a little boy, my daddy gave me a very fascinating gift. It didn’t look like much. Just a small, metallic, circular tube about ¼ inch thick and perhaps the circumference of a half dollar.  It looked at first glance like a plain pocket watch, with a stringy leather strap attached. You could see inside the tube, through its tiny glass face that it had a painted bottom, with the letters N, E, S, W proudly displayed in a clockwise fashion, and atop that face was little floating arrow. The pointy end was painted red, and no matter which direction you turned the tube, the little arrow with the red point, kept pointing in the same direction. I was fascinated! It was the first compass I had ever seen. My dad explained briefly how to use it, and told me to always trust the compass, (regardless of my instincts) and I’d never get lost.
 
Very simply stated, like all magnets that are attracted to opposite poles, the tiny needle of a compass is a magnet that is attracted to the magnetic pull from the north pole. The fascinating thing is how sensitive it must be, and depending on how you look at it, how strong the pull from the north pole has to be!  It seems like if it were such a strong pull, it would tug at everything attracted to a magnet… and if the needle of the compass is so sensitive, it would be disrupted by every refrigerator magnet or pocket magnet in the world!