This discovery, which was made in the
early part of the nineteenth century is credited to Oersted, Ampere, Biot
and Savart, among others In the present chapter, we take a look at magnetism as a subject in its
own right Some of the commonly known ideas regarding magnetism are:
(i)
The earth behaves as a magnet with the magnetic field pointing
approximately from the geographic south to the north (ii) When a bar magnet is freely suspended, it points in  the north-south
direction