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However it's still currently good enough to get an average person to their destination if their GPS enabled device has run out of battery and they happen to hav
by gushie 7y ago
However it's still currently good enough to get an average person to their destination if their GPS enabled device has run out of battery and they happen to have a map and compass on them.
- alecmg 7y agoUnfortunately for most people nowadays, the compass is the same electronic device (their smartphone) that does GPS. ...and the map is also the same device.
- avar 7y agoMost smartphones that are out of a battery can give you magnetic north if you also have a big rock (smash phone apart), and make a compass leaf out of a piece of metal in the phone, something like a leaf and a patch of still water. The phone most likely has a magnet (e.g. in the speaker) to magnetize the metal.
- perl4ever 7y agoI believe most if not all smartphones also have a magnetometer in them, apart from the GPS or the metal components in general.
- magicalhippo 7y agoTrue but that's going to be a MEMS[1] device, so not much use without the rest of the phone operating. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEMS_magnetic_field_sensor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MEMS_magnetic_field_sensor
- avian 7y agoI can't think of any ferrous parts in a modern phone. Enclosures are all either plastic, aluminum or magnesium. Circuit board will be copper. Maybe some internal structural elements or RF shield cans are made of steel? Microphones are MEMS these days, so no magnets there. Speaker magnets are tiny and also tend to have weird magnetization patterns that seem useless for making a compass (e.g. disc with a circular channel for the coil where N-S are inside of the channel)
- Sharlin 7y agoNote that PCBs are made of dielectric (non-conductive) composite materials such as fiberclass-resin laminate. The conductive copper film covering the substrate is on the order of 100 micrometers thick.
- 0xffff2 7y agoI doubt this is true for most people who can and might realistically need to be able to navigate with a paper map and analog compass. In other words, the skill is about as rare or rarer than the equipment.