What's the difference between the north and the south pole on a magnet? I was testing out objects with magnets and I didn't understand what made the north pole different from the south pole. I thought the poles were made of different materials, but I realized it wasn't. Can someone tell me what factors differentiate the north from the south?
 A: I would say the difference between the north and south pole of a magnet is analogous to the difference between the geographic north and south pole of a spinning ball (for example earth). There are two points on a rotating body where its axis of rotation intersects its surface. If we call one of these points "north pole" and the other "south pole" we can use the locations of these two points to specify the spin direction.
So do the magnetic north and south poles of a magnet also indicate the spin direction of anything? What does rotate inside magnets? In very simple terms, the electrons. An electron has a spin and this creates a magnetic field, the strength and direction of that magnetic field is described by the so called "spin magnetic moment". If most of them spin in the same direction, you get a net magnetic field. If they spin in different directions, they cancel each other out and you don't get a net magnetic field. So the magnetic north and south poles of a magnet indicate something like the average spin direction of the electrons in the magnet.
Note that this analogy also explains how new poles are created when you split a magnet and why no magnetic monopoles exist. If you split the rotating earth in half along the equator, then both halves would still spin in the same direction, so the top half would have a new geographic south pole at the bottom and the bottom half would have a new geographic north pole at the top. And for the monopole, we can't specify a direction by only giving one point.  How would a body look like whose axis of rotation would only intersect it's surface once? Of course a real body like that cannot exist. This is completely analogous for magnets with magnetic spin direction.
A: At the present time the test for the north (seeking) pole of a magnet is to suspend the magnet in the Earth's magnetic field.  
The magnet might oscillate a bit before aligning itself (like a compass needle) in a "North-South" direction.  
The end of the magnet which points approximately towards the "North" pole is the north pole of the magnet.  
If you have a compass, which consists of a pivoted magnet, the part of the compass needle which points towards the "north" is the north pole of the compass needle.

The reason for my use of inverted commas ("...") is that a magnet aligns itself along the direction of the magnetic field at its position and those magnetic field lines do not point to the North geographic pole.
The difference between the direction in which the magnet (compass) points and the direction to the North geographic pole  is called the angle of magnetic declination and for any location (at any tine as that angle of declination varies with time) you can use the NOAA Magnetic Field Calculator to find it.
This variation of the angle of declination with time is shown as a gif file here.  

In fact your question has an answer with a much deeper meaning in that the definition of the north and south pole of a magnet is arbitrary - think about what would happen with the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field in the future (or in the past).
This is linked to the supposed arbitrary definition of left and right handedness.
For example the direction of the magnetic field due to a current carrying wire can be found by using the right-hand grip rule.
This is a convention and one could equally have used the left hand to define the direction of the magnetic field as shown below.  
 
A: The North pole is where field lines come out and the South Pole is where they go into the magnet. That is all there is to it. 
