• The Journal of the Petrological Society of Korea
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.85-88
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• 2016

The new rocks of the oceanic crust, like basalt, are created in the mid-oceanic ridge, and the magnetic polarities of the rocks are supposed to be oriented as following the Earth's magnetic field. An extensive magnetic survey of total field at sea level reveals mainly unusual north-south magnetic stripes parallel to the axis of the mid-oceanic ridge, especially in the Atlantic Ocean. From this stripes the Earth's magnetic field is considered as repeatedly 'flipped'(the N pole becoming the S pole, and vice versa) and many times over geological time. The discovery of stripes of alternately normal and reversed-magnetized rocks forming the ocean floor has been a key evidence for the sea-floor spreading, continental drift, and plate tectonics. This study introduces a simple apparatus to explain a possible mechanism of the magnetic reversal in the new oceanic crust, which makes a magnetic stripe adjacent to the mid-oceanic ridge. The apparatus shows a bar magnet effect of adjoined stripes to have a special magnetic polarity on the rocks in the center of the mid-oceanic ridge. The new magnetic stripe seems to be generated not only by Earth's magnetic field, but also by neighbored stripes in the mid-oceanic ridge, acting as a bar magnet.