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At a given place on the Earth, the angle between the magnetic meridian and the geographic meridian is called

Asked in GUJCET 2008 · Field of a bar magnet and earth's field

Answer: (4) Magnetic declination

Step-by-step solution

Idea: at any place the geographic meridian is the vertical plane containing the geographic north-south line, and the magnetic meridian is the vertical plane in which a freely suspended magnet comes to rest.

The two planes do not coincide, because the Earth's magnetic axis is tilted by about 11° from its axis of rotation.

The angle between them, measured in the horizontal plane, is the magnetic declination of the place.

The other angle that describes the field there, its tilt below the horizontal, is the dip - a different quantity measured in a different plane.

So the angle asked for is the magnetic declination.

Why the other options are wrong

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