Savary’s method

Experiment Setup


  1. Wrap a steel needle with insulated wire;
  2. Connect the wire with power supply operating under constant current mode. A small resistor of 2Ohm is connected in serial with the coil.


  1. Fix a bar magnet (in Savary’s experiment a wire is used instead of magnet) on the table, make the orientation of the magnet the same as earth magnetic field ;
  2. Suspend the needle in horizontal plane and put the center of needle right above the center of magnet;
  3. Magnetize the needle and rotate it to be perpendicular with the magnet;
  4. Release the needle and start timing;
  5. Count the time of 30 oscillations.