How do I...

Finding north indoors

Finding north indoors may be easier than it seems. There may be metalwork present in the walls and/or floors or the best location for the seismometer may be near an electric socket. All of this may mean that north may deviate and therefore will be hard to locate using your compass. From previous experience, we have found that by taking a bearing of a wall outside and translating this inside works quite well. Below are details of how this may be done.

  1. Adjust your compass for magnetic north if required and set north on your compass.
  2. It is best to have a flat surface to lay your compass on so that the bearing will be as accurate as possible.
  3. Lay the compass on the ground with the Direction of Travel arrow pointing away from you.
  4. Line the edge of the baseplate up with the edge of the wall (note: you want to do this away from the wall as it will likely have metalwork within it). You can also use the lines which run parallel with the edge of the baseplate if these are easier to see.
  5. Once you have got it lined up, press the baseplate down firmly to keep it in place. You then want to rotate the compass housing so that the housing compass north is aligned with the wall. Note how many degrees you rotate this off the north that you had originally set. This will be how many degrees north is from the wall.
  6. You then want to go inside the building and locate the seismometer however many degrees off the wall that you had recorded outside.
  7. You can hold your compass at a height above the seismometer and see if it aligns with north although as mentioned earlier, this may not be accurate due to metalwork which may be present in the building.
  8. Most phones now have compasses available or apps are available to download. This normally operates using a magnetometer so can succumb to interference. It works when Location Services is both on and off. You can also normally set this to display as true north, which is a GPS bearing linked to the geographical location of the North Pole, and only works when Location Services is turned on (note this is on iPhones and may differ on android phones).