Hey guys welcome back i'm Nate with the king of random and today
We're going to be doing a few small projects that let us take a look at the relationship between
Magnets and electricity growing up. I always love playing with magnets and over the years the quality of magnets available has improved significantly
These silver coloured rare earth magnets are very powerful
And you can do a lot of really cool things with them the purpose of today's video is to show you a few awesome tricks
That you can do with magnets and electricity using some easily available supplies here are the materials
we're going to need for today's projects aluminum foil some double-a and
triple-a batteries
Some strong rare earth magnets and you want to make sure that the diameter of the magnet is at least a little bit larger than
The diameter of your triple-a battery some coated copper wire I found this in the jewelry making section at a craft store
This is copper wire that has a thin layer of
Enamel paint over it it can often come in several different colors some uncoated copper wire
Electrical tape and a couple safety pins now the first thing that we're going to do is extremely simple
I have here a stack of these rare earth magnets and a roll of foil what I'm gonna do is
I'm going to drop the magnets down through the tube to watch what happens. There's nothing in this tube. It's completely empty
Let's watch what happens if I just drop them without the tube
They fall straight down. Nothing's impeding them, but if I drop it through the foil
It goes way slower like that's not even half the speed it's amazing how much slower it goes
It's not rubbing up against the size of the tube or anything like that as far as I understand it
Here's what happens when a magnet moves past metal it creates an electric field and when electricity is running through metal it creates a magnetic
field so as the magnet drops through the metal the metal becomes charged with electricity and then turns into an electromagnet itself the
Electromagnet that is the foil is then repelling the magnet that's falling down through the tube
so it slows it down a lot and the more powerful the magnet the more powerful the electric field the more powerful the
Electromagnet and the slower it goes it's kind of confusing
But I'm going to try and turn it upside down when it's almost at the bottom and just keep it going
Yes off you
Well nope nope
That's crazy magnets, let's try the next experiment for this one
We're going to take a double-a battery and attach three of our rare earth magnets to the bottom of it
Next we want to take about one foot of our bare copper wire bend your wire in half and use a pair of pliers
To pinch where it's bent now, let's bend the wire into a sort of a heart shape
You'll want to touch the bent portion of your wire to the top of your battery
Next we want to bend the two ends of our wire so that they will run directly across the middle of the magnets if you
Have excess wire sticking out too far trim that off
You'll also want to bend your wires to make sure that the two ends are parallel to each other
At this point we should be able to make a small motor by placing the wire on top of the battery so that the two
Ends of the wire are in contact with the magnets the wire should begin to spin
Now you can see that the wire did begin to move, but it quickly destabilized and fell off
So we're going to add a couple of curves on the bottom wires to hold it more securely onto the magnet by bending the wire
Around the battery we can create a sort of groove that will line up with the magnets and hold our wire in place
I'm gonna see if it worked any better with the magnets on the other side so the
Little nib of copper doesn't have to balance quite so perfectly on the tip of the battery
Well now it just slipped off the other part of the battery
It still made contact right there on the little edge, so it's still I'll finally slow down alright
I keep having my little copper motor spin so fast that it falls off
And I'm trying to find ways to make it stay in place so I think what I'm gonna try and do is I'm going to
Try and put a tiny divot in the back of the battery that will give our little pivot point something to stay balanced in so
It doesn't fly off quite so easily
I have a nail with a slightly dull head
and I'm going to try and line that up with the very center of the back of the battery and
Lightly tap it with a hammer to give it a nice dent
I need to be careful of course that I don't stab into the battery
I don't know exactly what that would do, but I'm sure it wouldn't be good
All right, that's not bad, let's try that out and see if it's gonna work
That's working pretty well
Oh my gosh
And it's spinning so fast that it's inertia is causing the battery and magnets to rotate the other direction a little bit. That's pretty funny
There you have it seems that making a dent in the battery does a pretty good job of helping it stay centered
And it doesn't fall off as easily
Now let's make another kind of motor this one uses the same principles, but is a different design
We'll need our double-a battery a couple more magnets two small safety pins our
coded wire and some electrical tape the coated wire is copper wire that has a thin layer of
protective enamel on the outside of it the enamel prevents the copper from making contact with the battery so
Electricity can't flow through it unless we remove part of the enamel to start cut off about one foot of your coated copper wire
Leaving about two inches at the end wrap your wire around your double-a battery several times
Wrap the ends of the wire around the coil a few times to hold it all together
Now we want to trim the excess wires so that they extend about one centimeter beyond the edge of our double-a battery
Now that our wires trimmed we need to remove the enamel from one side of the wires
Take some fine grit sandpaper and remove the enamel from one side of the wire until you can see the copper beneath it you can
See the copper color that shows that the enamel has been removed from one side of the other
But it's still in place on the other side with the enamel removed from both sides of the wire our coil is ready
And it's time to assemble the rest of our motor with electrical tape attach the safety pins
So they are in contact with the two ends of the battery you'll want to be sure that the loops and the safety pins are
At the same height and lined up with each other
Secure your battery and pins to the table with the pins pointing straight up
Attach one magnet to the battery in between the two pins
Feed one wire from your copper coil through the loop in one of the pins
Feed the other wire through the loop in the other pin let go of your coil and it might start moving
If it doesn't take off on its own right away give it a little nudge
For the last experiment we're gonna need a little bit more copper wire
I have about 20 feet of it right here
And we're also going to need a triple-a battery
And four of our rare earth magnets it can sometimes be tricky to find copper wire without any sort of coating on it
The copper wire I'm using comes with a plastic coating around it
I just shave that off and it gives me some nice exposed copper
I'm gonna show you how I use a razor blade to quickly remove the plastic coating from this copper wire
Now that I've removed a thin strip of the plastic from the whole wire I can easily peel it off from the rest
Next we want a wooden dowel with a diameter slightly
Larger than our magnets what we want to do is tightly coil all twenty feet of this copper wire around the dowel
Now this seems like it's going to take a really long time
So I'm gonna try and speed it up using power tools
With the dowel now securely attached to the Chuck of the drill I can now start spinning it and wrapping the wire around it evenly
Remove your copper coil from the dowel and spread it out
Just a little bit
So there's a tiny bit of space in between each loop if there are any spots where the gap is too large
You can usually just push it back together
We now have a copper coil about one foot long, so let's take our magnets and attach them to our battery
Before you attach two more magnets to the other end you need to make sure that they're oriented correctly
Facing one direction the magnets are attracted to each other and will pull themselves together
But if you flip them around the magnets will repel each other in that same
orientation with the magnets repelling each other attach two more magnets to the bottom of the battery
At this point if you fit the battery and magnets into the copper coil something pretty fun should happen
Check that out the battery and magnets pull themselves through the copper coil like a little self-driving electric train, let's do that again
Mm-hmm there goes flies right through the whole coil
We
Made it around the curve
Okay, so what is happening as our little train goes through its little tunnel when the magnets make contact with the copper coil electricity is
running through them and through the copper as
We know electricity running through the metal wire turns it into a magnet because we have our magnets facing opposite directions
The magnet of the coil is pulling on one side and pushing on the other running it through like a train
It goes all on its own, that's so fun I could probably just play with this thing all day
So cool so many neat things you can do with magnets and electricity a quick recap a
Powerful magnet drop through a tube of aluminum foil will fall very slowly because it's movement creates an electromagnet
Which slows it down this small type of motor was made by just bending a piece of copper
So it touched the top of the battery and the magnets stuck to the bottom of it it had some problems
Destabilizing until we flip the battery upside down and put a small divot in the bottom of it
Another type of small motor can be made by running electricity through a tightly wound copper coil
Rotating over a magnet a couple of magnets stuck to a battery in opposite directions will run through a copper coil like a miniature electric
Train there you have it now. You know a few small simple tricks you can do with magnets and electricity at home
Thank you for joining us for this project and we will see you in the next one. Talk to you then
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