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.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
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
It is counted among China's Four Great Inventions and was adopted for navigation only in the 11th century under the Song.
Q 03The earliest Chinese compasses were made from lodestone, a naturally magnetised form of which mineral?
Magnetite
Only a tiny fraction of magnetite is found naturally magnetised.
Q 04What is the leading theory for how lodestones become magnetised in nature?
Lightning strikes
Earth's field, at about half a gauss, is far too weak to do the job on its own.
Q 05The Middle English word 'lodestone' means what?
Leading stone
'Lode' once meant a journey or way, 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
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
The Wujing Zongyao recommended the iron 'south-pointing fish' for troops caught in gloomy weather or dark nights.
Q 08Which Chinese polymath first explicitly described a magnetised needle compass, in his Dream Pool Essays of 1088?
Shen Kuo
He also worked out that the needle points slightly away from true north, an early observation of the compass's offset.
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
Chinese mariners typically floated a magnetised needle in a bowl of water rather than balancing it on a pin.
Q 10Which English scholar wrote the first European description of the mariner's compass, around 1190?
Alexander Neckam
His De naturis rerum describes sailors using a magnetised needle; the Islamic world's first record came in 1232.
Q 11Petrus Peregrinus described both a floating and a dry pivoting compass in 1269 in which famous letter?
Epistola de magnete
Dry compasses appear in Europe from about that date and in the Islamic world around 1300.
Q 12Tradition credits Flavio Gioja, a pilot from which Italian port, with perfecting the mariner's compass?
Amalfi
Between 1295 and 1302 he is said to have turned the floating needle into a boxed compass with a 360-degree card.
Q 13The earliest Arabic reference to a compass, a needle in a bowl of water, came from which city in 1282?
Cairo
Baylak al-Qibjaqi's account came half a century after the first Islamic mention; a 1300 treatise describes a dry compass used to find the qibla.
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
They work with permanent magnets and a Flinders bar to cancel the effect of ferromagnetic material nearby.
Q 22What is the fixed mark on a ship's compass bowl that shows the heading against the card?
Lubber line
The card floats in a gimballed bowl inside a binnacle so it stays level as the ship rolls.
Q 23Contours on a chart joining points of equal compass variation are called what?
Isogonic
Q 14Which English physician's 1600 book De Magnete argued that the Earth itself is a giant magnet?
William Gilbert
He also coined the adjective 'electricus' from the Greek word for amber.
Q 15What did Gilbert call the spherical lodestone he used as a model Earth?
Terrella
Cutting it through the poles and equator, he showed how the direction of attraction changes across its surface.
Q 16Who demonstrated a rudimentary liquid compass to the Royal Society in 1690?
Edmond Halley
He also produced a chart of compass variation for the Atlantic in 1700; a practical liquid compass was patented by Francis Crow in 1813.
Q 17Which American inventor's 1862 patent for an improved liquid marine compass was adopted by the US Navy?
Edward Samuel Ritchie
The Royal Navy later bought his design too, but did not generally adopt liquid compasses until the early 20th century.
Q 18In which year did the Royal Navy generally adopt the liquid compass over Lord Kelvin's dry design?
1908
Growing ship and gun sizes made the liquid design's shock-damping impossible to ignore.
Q 19The angle between the direction a compass needle points and true north at a given place is called what?
Declination
Sailors call it variation; where it is zero, the line on a chart is called agonic.
Q 20On a ship, compass errors caused by iron and steel in the vessel's own structure are known as what?
Deviation
A deviation card lets the navigator convert compass headings to magnetic ones; the errors are reduced with two iron balls and a Flinders bar on the binnacle.
Where the variation is zero, the line is called agonic; the value can differ by twenty degrees between the two ends of a single coastline.
Q 24The traditional European mariner's compass is divided into how many points?
32
Each point is 11 and a quarter degrees; 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
Sailors still speak of an object 'two points off the starboard bow', meaning 22.5 degrees clockwise of dead ahead.
Q 26On the mariner's compass, what does 'NE by E' mean?
One point from NE towards E
The mnemonic is 'X by Y' equals 'one small measure from X towards Y'.
Q 27The four ordinal or intercardinal directions are which?
NE, SE, SW and NW
They bisect the cardinal points and together with them form 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
Old roses often marked the direction of Jerusalem with a Christian cross.
Q 29On medieval Mediterranean compass roses, which direction was often marked with a Christian cross?
East
It pointed towards Jerusalem; the traditional wind names for east and north were Levante and Tramontana.
Q 30In the traditional Italianate wind names still found on old compasses, 'Ponente' is which direction?
West
Tramontana is north and Ostro south, with Scirocco and Libeccio among the intermediate winds.