There's something I've recently wanted to try.
This is Calvin.
Calvin's my son, and he loves to jump.
There's a lot of energy there.
What if I could harness that energy
to make his playtime even more fun?
What if I could generate a little bit of electricity
using his jumping power that could power some LEDs,
or light emitting diodes?
All I've got to do to generate electricity
is take this magnet and move it across that wire.
The metal in the wire
has lots of negatively charged electrons in it
that can easily be moved with a magnet.
Moving the magnet back and forth makes the electrons move,
and moving electrons is basic electricity.
Sometimes, we just refer to this as power.
Just having one wire
with one small magnet going back and forth
is not going to generate enough power for that LED to turn on.
Instead, what we can do is for every jump,
have the magnet go through lots and lots of wraps
of the same wire.
We'll do that by making a coil
and having the magnets go back and forth inside the coil.
I'm going to use this really thin wire.
It's actually called magnet wire,
and it's specifically for making things like this,
like electromagnetic motors and stuff like that.
My magnets fit right inside this tube,
so I'm going to wrap that magnet wire around this tube.
Now we just have to put some wire on there,
so I'm going to connect up this rod to this drill
so the drill does the spinning for me.
Ah-ha!
Perfect.
(whirring)
This is working out great!
I have no idea if this is enough,
but we're going to try it
by zipping those magnets back and forth.
Yes!
I totally saw that flash, did you see it flash?
Ha!
Now we just have to fine tune it a bit, put it all together,
and hook it up to Calvin's jumping apparatus.
I didn't wind up having to redesign it,
but I did make some strong improvements.
I've got three coils and three LEDs now.
Each of these coils has about 500 wraps of wire.
I found that the more wraps of copper I put on there,
the brighter the LED would flash
when I zipped the magnets through.
That little red guy that I was using wasn't so bright,
so I found some ultra-bright LEDs.
I had been imagining the coils being stationary
and the magnet moving up and down through them.
As I hold these pieces together though,
I think I've realized that
the coils need to move up and down with Calvin
so that he's sure to be able to see the LEDs.
Instead, the magnets hold still and the coils move.
Let's do a little test, Mr. Bear.
All right, this is good.
I've got the coils mounted on the jumping setup
so that when the jumping happens,
the coils move up and down like I wanted
and the LEDs are moving up and down with the jumper.
Three barbecue skewers.
I'm going to tape the magnets on one end.
The skewer is mounted to the chain
above the bungee cord part of the jumper
so the magnets remain stationary
while the tube moves with the jumper.
(laughs)
It's working!
Are you ready?
Oh yeah, Calvin.
(quiet babbling)
(laughs)
Calvin, are you noticing those lights you're making go?
Check it out!
If you have an idea, try to make it happen.
Brainstorm, test, design, redesign, and test again,
enough times that you can pull it off.
It's great to see something
that you came up with and designed actually work.
Come on, buddy, let's go.
Jump, jump!
Flash, flash!