Keep a ship's log for the day the crew learned their compass had been wrong since port.Fact: a ship's compass must be corrected for the iron and steel in the ship itself.
A sewing needle is stroked with a magnet and becomes a magnet itself. Write the needle's surprise.Fact: if a needle is rubbed on a magnet, the needle becomes magnetized.
Write about a world where magnets pick up wood instead of iron. What changes on your street?Angle: fences, pencils, trees in a storm.
A detective uses a magnet to prove that a car's steel door is partly plastic. Write the scene.Fact: in the magnet test, a car body is checked with a magnet to find repairs made with plastic putty.
A magnet falls in a pond and nothing happens. Write its diary entry for the day.Fact: water is not pulled by a magnet. Like plastic, it is very weakly repelled.
A magnet is lowered into a jar of mixed buttons, beads and pins. Write what comes up and what stays.Angle: tell it as a bead that hoped to be chosen.
A magnet keeps a wish list of five things it wishes it could pick up, and why. Write the list.Angle: a cloud, a pizza, a compliment.
A magnet that got too hot can no longer pick up anything. Write its first day without its pull.Fact: heated past its Curie temperature, a magnet loses all of its magnetism.
A magnet tries to make friends with a wooden spoon, a rubber duck and a glass marble. Write the three polite refusals.Angle: each one explains what it is made of.
A magnet will not pick it up. Write three clues to what it is, and let a friend guess.Angle: three clues about what it is made of, none of them the word metal.
A magnet, a paper clip and a piece of copper wire share a short play, and only one of them moves. Write it.Fact: copper is not pulled by a magnet. It is repelled, far too weakly to feel.
Guess first, then write: which five things in your backpack would a magnet pick up, and which five would it not?Fact: iron nails, staples, tacks and paper clips are things a magnet picks up.
Invent a game where players call out sticks or does not stick before a magnet tests each thing. Write the rules.Angle: say how a point is scored and who checks.
Take a magnet on a walk through your home and write the list of what it ignored.Fact: a magnet pulls on iron, steel, nickel and cobalt.
Tell a sorting day at a scrapyard as the crane with the magnet.Fact: a junkyard crane uses an electromagnet, which stops being a magnet when the current stops.
Write about a world where magnets pick up wood instead of iron. What changes on your street?Angle: fences, pencils, trees in a storm.
Write an argument between an iron nail and a ball of aluminum foil about which of them is the real metal.Fact: not every metal is magnetic. Iron, cobalt and nickel are, and aluminum is not.
Write the complaint of an aluminum can that a magnet will not pick up.Fact: aluminum is a non-magnetic metal. Scrap yards use magnets to sort it from iron.
The compass 15
A compass is set down beside a car and starts to point the wrong way. Write the argument between them.Fact: a compass is thrown off by nearby iron and steel, and is hard to use in or near a car.
A hatchling asks a sea turtle how she knows the way without a compass. Write her answer.Fact: there is evidence that some animals, like sea turtles and salmon, navigate by Earth's magnetic field.
A hiker's phone goes dark and the old compass at the bottom of the bag gets its chance. Write the compass's big day.Angle: it has been waiting years to be asked.
A researcher in the far north has a compass that points south. Write the letter home.Fact: at very high latitudes a compass can even point south.
A sailor long ago floats a magnetized needle in a bowl of water for the first time. Write the moment.Fact: a needle rubbed on a lodestone, set in a cork and floated in water, becomes a compass.
Build a compass poem in four stanzas, north, east, south and west, each one something you can see from your chair.Angle: turn the chair a quarter turn for each stanza.
Draw up a treasure map in words that uses only compass directions and paces, then write the trip of someone who follows it.Angle: one instruction is smudged.
Earth is a magnet of a kind. Write a conversation between the planet and a pocket compass.Fact: Earth's core generates its own magnetic field, so in a sense the planet is a magnet.
Explain to a friend why a compass does not point exactly at the North Pole on a globe.Fact: at most places a compass does not point exactly toward geographic north.
Imagine the morning every compass on Earth turns around. Write the news report.Fact: Earth's field does reverse, over hundreds to thousands of years, last about 780,000 years ago.
Keep a ship's log for the day the crew learned their compass had been wrong since port.Fact: a ship's compass must be corrected for the iron and steel in the ship itself.
Two explorers stand at the north geomagnetic pole and look at their compass. Write what it does and what they say.Fact: at the north geomagnetic pole a compass held level has no preferred direction to point.
Write a compass needle's thoughts as its owner spins in circles.Fact: a compass needle is magnetized and pivots to line up with Earth's magnetic field.
Write the legend of the first person to notice that a hanging stone always turned the same way.Fact: lodestones, hung so they could turn, were the first magnetic compasses.
You are in a wood with a compass and a map. Write the walk out, turn by turn.Fact: on a compass north is 0 degrees, east is 90, south is 180 and west is 270.
A magnet in my pocket 15
A box of tacks spills across the classroom floor. Write how the kid with a magnet in a pocket becomes the hero of the afternoon.Fact: a magnet picks up tacks, staples and paper clips that are too small for fingers to hold.
A kid trades a pocket magnet for a marble and regrets it by lunchtime. Write the trade and the trade back.Angle: what could the magnet do that the marble could not?
A magnet in a coat pocket rides a train that floats above its track. Write what it makes of the giants underneath.Fact: a maglev train is suspended, guided and pushed along by electromagnetic force.
A refrigerator magnet has held up the same drawing for five years. Write its speech on the day the drawing is replaced.Fact: a refrigerator magnet is a permanent magnet. It makes its own lasting magnetic field.
A sewing needle is stroked with a magnet and becomes a magnet itself. Write the needle's surprise.Fact: if a needle is rubbed on a magnet, the needle becomes magnetized.
Describe a magnet to someone who has never held one, without the words pull, stick or attract.Angle: describe what your hand feels just before the click.
Invent a use for a pocket magnet that nobody has thought of, and write the ad for it.Fact: magnets already close necklace clasps, and some screwdrivers are magnetized to pick up small parts.
The magnet in your pocket tugs toward something under the sidewalk. Write what you find.Angle: decide first whether it is ordinary or not.
Tell a day from a magnet's side: a dark pocket, lint, and sudden trips out to the refrigerator door.Angle: what does it think of the note it holds up?
Write a list poem: Ten places my magnet has stuck.Angle: end with the one place it would not.
Write about a pocket magnet that has been dropped so many times it is getting weaker.Fact: hammering or jarring a magnet can reduce its magnetism.
Write the secret life of the magnets in your home that nobody sees: in the speaker, in the motor of the fan.Fact: most speakers use a permanent magnet, and so do some electric motors.
Write what you would see if the field around your pocket magnet turned visible for one minute.Fact: a magnet's field is invisible, and it is what does the pulling.
You carry a small magnet in your pocket for one school day. Write everything that stuck to it by three o'clock.Angle: a paper clip, a staple, one thing you cannot explain.
Your pocket magnet breaks in two on the playground. Write what you have now.Fact: break a bar magnet in two and each piece is a magnet with a north and a south pole.
Opposites attract 15
A child in an ancient town finds a dark stone that pulls at an iron ring. Write what the town decides it is.Fact: ancient people learned about magnetism from lodestones, naturally magnetized pieces of iron ore.
A magnet has an advice column, and a paper clip writes in, worried that it is being pulled into something. Write the answer.Angle: the magnet is kind, and also the problem.
A magnet with an off switch gets to decide when to attract. Write its story.Fact: an electromagnet is a coil of wire that is a magnet only while electric current flows.
A north pole tries to get away from its south pole by snapping the magnet in half. Write what it finds on its own piece.Fact: the two ends cannot be separated. Each piece of a broken magnet has both poles.
Choreograph a dance for two magnets in words: the steps when they attract and the steps when they repel.Angle: write it as instructions a pair of dancers could follow.
Describe the moment two magnets snap together, in slow motion, from an inch apart.Angle: use the sound.
Make a magnet poem in which every line pulls toward the next, and one line pushes away.Angle: the reader should feel which line it is.
Name the two poles of a magnet as characters and write their introductions at a party.Fact: a magnet's north pole is the one that points toward Earth's North Magnetic Pole when hung free.
The north end of a compass needle points north. Work out in writing what kind of pole must be waiting up there.Fact: since opposite poles attract, Earth's North Magnetic Pole is really a south pole of its field.
Opposites attract: write about two people you know who prove it, or two who prove it wrong.Angle: say what each one brings that the other lacks.
Two magnets keep pushing each other away. Write the argument, and what happens when one of them turns around.Fact: a magnet attracts or repels other magnets.
Two magnets meet on a table. Write the scene twice: once with opposite poles facing, once with matching poles facing.Fact: opposite poles, a north and a south, attract.
Two magnets on either side of a tabletop move each other without touching. Write it as the top magnet, which thinks it is moving by itself.Angle: when does it find out?
Write a friendship story about a north pole and a south pole who could not be more different.Angle: what does each one do that the other cannot stand, and cannot do without?
Write the word magnet its own origin story.Fact: the word comes from Greek for a stone from Magnesia, a place where lodestones were found.
How it works
A magnetism writing prompt works best with a magnet to hand. These magnet writing prompts test what it ignores, follow a compass needle and set two poles arguing. Facts come from the US Geological Survey and Wikipedia.
Read the full guide
What a magnet will not pick up
Fifteen prompts start from the refusals: a wooden spoon, a rubber duck and a glass marble each say no politely, an aluminum can complains, and a magnet falls in a pond and nothing happens.
A writing prompt on magnets and the compass
The compass prompts run from a needle floated in a bowl of water to a ship whose own iron pulled its compass wrong. A researcher in the far north writes home about a compass that points south, and a sea turtle explains how she finds the way.
Guess before you test, and write the guess down. The surprise is the story.
Give each pole a voice. North and south never agree and never part.
Questions and answers
What is a good magnetism writing prompt?
One you can test. Take a magnet on a walk through your home and write the list of what it ignored. Or carry it in a pocket for one school day and write everything that stuck to it by three o'clock.
What will a magnet not pick up?
Most things. A magnet pulls on iron, steel, nickel and cobalt. Aluminum is a metal and is not magnetic. Copper, water and plastic are repelled, far too weakly for anybody to feel.
Why does a compass point north?
Its needle is magnetized and turns on a pivot until it lines up with Earth's magnetic field, which the planet's core generates. The US Geological Survey adds that at most places a compass does not point exactly toward geographic north.
Do opposite poles of a magnet attract?
Yes. Opposite poles, a north and a south, attract. Break a bar magnet in two to separate them and each piece has both poles again. One prompt has a north pole try exactly that.