What Is The Compass On Modern Ships? Does The Ancient Magnetic Compass Still Work?Ⅰ

Modern ships are equipped with a variety of advanced navigation equipment at the same time, such as GPS satellite navigation, radio navigation, Loran navigation, radar navigation, log and automatic radar plotting instrument, etc.

These equipment can not only easily determine the ship's position, but also automatically avoid and navigate automatically, so as to know the detailed information of other ships from a long distance.

However, even with high-tech equipment, the international maritime organization still requires all ships to install an ancient navigation equipment - compass.

Gyrocompass is an instrument providing direction reference, which can be divided into magnetic compass and Gyrocompass (electric compass). Although they are called Gyrocompasses, their working principles are not the same.

1、 Magnetic compass is one of the earliest navigation equipment to determine course, object orientation and solar orientation. Its predecessor is the famous compass (Sinan).

Later, people combined the magnetic needle and the azimuth plate to invent the water compass. In the Ming Dynasty, zheng he completed the great feat of seven voyages to the West.

The water compass continued to develop into a more accurate and reliable magnetic compass.

Its principle is known to all that the earth is a large magnetic field, and the magnetic needle points to the magnetic north pole under the action of the magnetic field.

However, the magnetic north pole is not consistent with the earth's true geographical North, which is 1500 km away. The magnetic north pole changes over time, even during the day.

The angle difference between North and true north indicated by magnetic compass is called magnetic difference.

The magnetic difference of different regions is very different. People can make the magnetic difference curve or mark it on the compass flower.

The crew can easily calculate the true north direction by consulting the data.

                                                                                                                             【To be continued...】