If possible, float one of the bar magnets on top of a cork in a puddle or open container of water. Finally, if you and the ET are still interested, you can show that the magnetic north pole and the geographic north pole are not in the same place. This is very important to people who use the compass the actually navigate. Now place your pocket compass on the shadow, and draw a line showing the direction in which it points. The angle between this line and the shadow is called the declination.
Some planets have a very large declination, such as Uranus in our solar system.
You know from ordinary experience that some materials can be picked up by magnets and some cannot. The situation is a little more complicated than that, as shown in Fig.297. Two centuries ago Michael Faraday discovered that all the materials he tested were influenced in one way or another by a magnetic field. Some were attracted by a magnet, and some were repelled although they weren't themselves magnets. This includes iron, nickel, and cobalt.