Magnetic fields were mapped as early as the thirteenth century, and one of the earliest drawings of a magnetic field was made in 1644 by René Descartes (1). Our present-day understanding of magnetic fields can be traced back to the English scientist Michael Faraday who, in 1852, published drawings of field patterns around various arrangements of magnets (2).
A magnetic field line shows the direction in which a small magnet (e.g. a compass needle) aligns itself, and arrows show the direction in which a north-seeking pole points. Magnetic
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