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50 free Compass trivia questions with answers — technology quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This compass trivia quiz covers the humble direction-finder from Han dynasty divination spoons to the gyrocompasses in submarines. The easy questions handle which direction is 90 degrees, the four ordinal points, where the needle actually points and which layer of the Earth makes the field. From there it moves into the history: the mineral behind lodestone, the south-pointing fish, the English monk who first described the compass in Europe, the Amalfi pilot credited with the compass card and the physician who called the Earth a magnet. The harder end is for navigators, sailors and pub-quiz specialists: the difference between variation and deviation, why there are two iron balls on a binnacle, what 'north-east by east' means, the 6,400 mils of a military compass, the five balancing zones, the year the Royal Navy finally accepted liquid compasses and how fast the magnetic pole is racing towards Siberia. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on the compass, its history, magnetic declination, the compass rose and the scientists and inventors involved, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, our inventions, exploration and maps quizzes are natural next stops.
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Q 01On a compass card marked in degrees, how many degrees separate one cardinal direction from the next?
90
North is 0 and the numbers rise clockwise, so the four cardinal points fall at 0, 90, 180 and 270.
Q 02The magnetic compass was first invented in China during which dynasty, initially for divination?
Han
Han dynasty geomancers were using lodestone direction-finders by the 1st century AD, when Wang Chong's Lunheng described one; the compass counts among China's Four Great Inventions.
Q 03Lodestone, used in the earliest Chinese compasses, is a natural form of which mineral?
Magnetite
Magnetite, the iron oxide Fe3O4, is the mineral; only a small fraction of it occurs strongly enough magnetised to count as lodestone.
Q 04What is the leading theory for how lodestones become magnetised in nature?
Lightning strikes
Lightning strikes are the leading explanation: the intense, brief magnetic field around a bolt can magnetise surface ore near the strike, whereas Earth's field, about half a gauss, is far too weak on its own.
Q 05The Middle English word 'lodestone' means what?
Leading stone
Leading stone is the sense: Middle English 'lode' meant a way or course, so a lodestone was the stone that led, a reminder that suspended lodestones were the first compasses.
Q 06The early Chinese divination compass was shaped like what, resting on a bronze plate?
A spoon
A spoon of lodestone, the sinan, rested on a bronze board; the 1st-century Lunheng records that the south-pointing spoon, thrown on the ground, comes to rest pointing south.
Q 07An 11th-century Chinese military manual describes a direction-finder shaped like what, floating in water?
A fish
A fish of thin magnetised iron, the 'south-pointing fish' of the Wujing Zongyao of 1044, floated in a bowl of water to guide troops in gloomy weather or on dark nights.
Q 08Which Chinese polymath first explicitly described a magnetised needle compass, in his Dream Pool Essays of 1088?
Shen Kuo
Shen Kuo, in the Dream Pool Essays of 1088, described rubbing a needle on lodestone and hanging it from a single silk thread, noting that it never settled exactly on due south.
Q 09Zhu Yu's Pingzhou Table Talks, dated 1111 to 1117, is notable for being the first text to record what?
Compass use in sea navigation
Compass use in sea navigation is first recorded there: Zhu Yu wrote that pilots on ships out of Guangzhou watched the stars by night, the sun by day, and the south-pointing needle in overcast weather.
Q 10Which English scholar wrote the first European description of the mariner's compass, around 1190?
Alexander Neckam
Alexander Neckam's De naturis rerum, written about 1190, describes sailors using a magnetised needle that turns to show north when the Pole Star is hidden by cloud.
Q 11Petrus Peregrinus described both a floating and a dry pivoting compass in 1269 in which famous letter?
Epistola de magnete
Epistola de magnete, his letter of 1269 to a friend, describes a needle floated in a bowl and a pivoted needle in a box with a graduated rim, the first European account of a dry compass.
Q 12Tradition credits Flavio Gioja, a pilot from which Italian port, with perfecting the mariner's compass?
Amalfi
Amalfi, the old maritime republic south of Naples, claims Gioja as a native son; around 1302 he is said to have mounted the needle on a pivot beneath a wind-rose card inside a box.
Q 13The earliest Arabic reference to a compass, a needle in a bowl of water, came from which city in 1282?
Cairo
Q 21What are the two metal spheres mounted either side of a marine compass binnacle for?
Correcting errors caused by the vessel's own steel
Correcting errors caused by the vessel's own steel is their job: the soft-iron spheres, with a vertical Flinders bar and small permanent magnets in the binnacle, cancel the ship's induced magnetism.
Q 22What is the fixed mark on a ship's compass bowl that shows the heading against the card?
Lubber line
Lubber line is the fixed mark on the bowl, aligned with the ship's bow, against which the heading is read off the floating card as the gimballed bowl stays level.
Q 23Contours on a chart joining points of equal compass variation are called what?
Cairo is where Baylak al-Qibjaqi wrote his 1282 account of a needle floating in a bowl of water, half a century after the first Islamic mention in a Persian tale collection of 1232.
Q 14Which English physician's 1600 book De Magnete argued that the Earth itself is a giant magnet?
William Gilbert
William Gilbert, physician to Elizabeth I, concluded in De Magnete that the Earth is itself a great magnet; he also coined 'electricus' from the Greek word for amber.
Q 15What did Gilbert call the spherical lodestone at the centre of his De Magnete experiments?
Terrella
Terrella, Latin for 'little earth', was Gilbert's name for the lodestone sphere; moving a small needle over its surface, he showed how the needle dipped more steeply toward the poles.
Q 16Who demonstrated a rudimentary liquid compass to the Royal Society in 1690?
Edmond Halley
Edmond Halley showed the Royal Society a needle floating in liquid in 1690; he later charted the Atlantic's compass variation after his Paramore voyages, publishing the map in 1701.
Q 17Which American inventor's 1862 patent for an improved liquid marine compass was adopted by the US Navy?
Edward Samuel Ritchie
Edward Samuel Ritchie, a Boston instrument maker, patented his liquid compass in 1862; the United States Navy adopted it and it became standard on American warships.
Q 18In which year did the Royal Navy generally adopt the liquid compass over Lord Kelvin's dry design?
1908
1908 was when the Royal Navy finally switched, because the recoil of ever-larger guns shook Lord Kelvin's dry-card compasses, while a liquid-filled bowl damped the shock.
Q 19The angle between the direction a compass needle points and true north at a given place is called what?
Declination
Declination, which sailors call variation, is the angle between magnetic and true north at a place; charts print it with a date because it shifts year by year.
Q 20On a ship, compass errors caused by iron and steel in the vessel's own structure are known as what?
Deviation
Deviation is the ship's own error; a deviation card, drawn up by swinging the ship through the compass points, lets the navigator convert compass headings into magnetic headings.
Isogonic
Isogonic lines join points of equal variation, while the special case of zero variation is called the agonic line; the first such chart of the Atlantic was published in 1701.
Q 24The traditional European mariner's compass is divided into how many points?
32
32 points make up the traditional card: the four cardinal, four intercardinal, eight 'half-winds' and sixteen 'by' points; reciting them all in order is called boxing the compass.
Q 25How many degrees is one point on the traditional 32-point compass?
11.25
11.25 degrees is a point, since 360 divided by 32 gives 11.25; a lookout reporting a ship 'two points off the starboard bow' means 22.5 degrees to the right of dead ahead.
Q 26On the mariner's compass, what does 'NE by E' mean?
One point from NE towards E
One point from NE towards E is the reading, 56.25 degrees: in the 'X by Y' names, 'by' always means one point from X stepped in the direction of Y.
Q 27The four ordinal or intercardinal directions are which?
NE, SE, SW and NW
NE, SE, SW and NW are the ordinal points, bisecting the cardinal directions at 45, 135, 225 and 315 degrees; with the four cardinals they make the basic eight-wind rose.
Q 28Which symbol did the Portuguese cartographer Pedro Reinel introduce as the north mark on compass roses?
The fleur-de-lis
The fleur-de-lis first appears as the north mark on Pedro Reinel's charts about 1504, replacing the plain spearhead or arrow that earlier roses used for the tramontana.
Q 29On medieval Mediterranean compass roses, which direction was often marked with a Christian cross?
East
East was marked with a cross because it pointed towards Jerusalem and the Holy Land, the direction pilgrims and crusaders sailed from Mediterranean ports.
Q 30In the traditional Italianate wind names used on old compasses, 'Ponente' is which direction?
West
West is Ponente, from the Latin for the setting sun; Tramontana is north and Ostro south, with Scirocco and Libeccio among the intermediate winds.