- [Jared] If you look around your house,
you will see many devices that have electric motors,
such as kids' toys, table fans,
toothbrushes, hairdryers, and this electric cutting knife.
But how does the electric motor work?
You turn it on and somehow it starts rotating.
Why is that?
In this video, we'll cover the basics of electricity
and magnets and then put it all together
to understand how the motor works.
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This video is sponsored by Brilliant.
Let's start with something called a circuit.
You have a battery, some wires
and a device that uses electricity,
such as a light bulb.
Electricity flows through the circuit.
But as soon as there is a break in the wire,
the electricity stops flowing
and the light bulb goes off.
The path must be complete for the circuit to work.
This is best done through the use of a switch.
Electricity is flowing down the wire.
This is called conventional flow.
If we take the battery out and flip it,
then the current will flow the other way.
The light bulb will still work in either case
but there are some devices
that will work differently depending
on which way the current flows.
Okay, so that's the basics of a circuit.
Now let's come over here.
This is a magnet.
It has a north pole and a south pole.
And it likes to attract other metal objects
like these paperclips.
If you bring another magnet towards it,
opposite poles attract,
and the same poles repel.
The magnets don't have to be in this shape,
for example, some magnets might be more flat, like this.
You can think of this magnet as always on,
it's always working, you can't really turn it off.
That's why it's sometimes called a permanent magnet.
It's made up of any smaller magnet domains
that are lined up in the same direction
but later, I'll show you a type of magnet
where this not always the case.
Let's take one of our permanent magnets
and drill a hole in the center
and put it on something that will allow it to spin.
Now, bring another magnet towards it.
Our spinning magnet will immediately line up
until opposite poles are right next to each other.
Now switch out the side magnet.
The same poles repel and opposite poles attract.
If we keep switching out these side magnets,
then our spinning magnet will just keep spinning.
This concept of the spinning magnet is really important.
We'll come back to it in a moment.
Here's a metal bolt which is not a magnet.
It's made up of magnetic domains
but they're pointing in random directions.
Now let's take a wire,
wrap it around several times and then create a circuit.
The current through wires forces the magnetic domains
to line up.
That means we've just made a magnet,
or more specifically, an electromagnet.
It can do the same things that a permanent magnet can.
It can pick up pieces of metal
and it has a north and a south pole,
which will attract or repel other magnets.
But the electromagnet is special
in the sense that it can be turned on or off,
just like the light bulb.
You can't do that with a permanent magnet.
Now watch what happens when we flip the battery.
The electric current was flowing this way
but now it flows the other way.
This will cause the poles on our magnet to switch places.
North will become south
and south will become north.
This is called reversing the polarity of an electromagnet.
Instead of flipping the battery,
an easier way to do this
is to just switch the wires.
You should be aware that the electromagnet
will get very hot if it's on for a while,
just a caution in case this video inspires
any science projects.
Let's come back to our spinning magnet.
This time we'll replace the spinning magnet
with our electromagnet.
As soon as we connect the wires,
the magnet turns on and it lines up
with the side magnet.
Now, in reality, connecting these wires
would prevent the bolt from spinning freely
but what's important here
is the concept of the spinning electromagnet.
Now let's switch the wires to reverse the poles
on the electromagnet.
The same poles repel and opposite poles attract.
Now, reverse the polarity again.
Same poles repel and opposite poles attract.
If we keep switching the polarity,
our electromagnet will just keep spinning.
To make this strong,
let's bring in another permanent magnet on the side.
Notice how this side has the south pole
towards the center and this side
has the north pole towards the center.
The side magnets work together
to spin the one in the middle.
This right here shows the very basics
of an electric motor
but we need to make a few improvements.
The two side magnets can be replaced
with stronger curved magnets.
And instead of a bolt with wires,
we're gonna use a metal loop.
This is called the armature.
Connect our wires and we have a circuit again.
This time, you can think of the electromagnet
as flat like this with the south pole pointing up.
Now the armature will spin
until opposite poles are lined up.
We can keep it spinning
by switching the wires just like we did before.
But this is a lot of work to sit here
and manually switch these wires.
We need to add something
to the armature called a commutator.
It's a ring with gaps in the opposite sides.
The commutator will spin along with the armature.
Now we connect the circuit with two brushes on the side.
These brushes will slide along
as the commutator spins.
And they are spring loaded
so that they always maintain contact.
The current flows from the wire
through the brush, the commutator ring,
the armature loop and back through the other side.
Now we have our electromagnet and the armature spins.
As we come around this time,
the brushes will switch contact
to the other side of the commutator ring.
And remember, there's two brushes
so this is happening on both sides.
Before the switch,
the current in the armature is flowing this way.
After the brushes switch sides,
current will flow the other way.
This means the electromagnet switches polarity,
which will cause the armature to keep spinning.
This commutator ring does the same thing
as switching the wires like we were doing before
but this time, it does it all on its own.
It will continue to spin
as long as we're connected to a battery.
Disconnect the battery, no more electromagnet
and the spinning stops.
Now, so far, we've only used one loop on the armature.
This will cause our motor to have an irregular speed
and in fact, we could get stuck in this position
with the brushes halfway between commutator segments.
What we can do is split the commutator ring
and then add another loop,
so first, the brushes are in contact
with these commutator segments,
which turns on this electromagnet,
which causes it to start spinning.
Once we get to here,
the brushes switch contact
to the next pair of commutator segments,
which means this loop turns off
and the next loop turns on.
Now, this electromagnet wants to spin.
The brushes switch contact
and the next loop turns on.
This keeps happening as our motor spins.
It's almost like the loops
will take turns being an electromagnet.
Some electric motors will add many loops to the armature.
This ensures that there will be a continuous spinning motion
on the motor.
This spinning force on the armature is called a torque.
Stronger torque means a faster spin.
There are some things we can do to improve the torque
of the motor.
Electromagnets are stronger when there are more wires.
This is true when we wrap more wires
around the metal bolt
and it's also true when each of our armature loops
are made of many wires.
The motor will have stronger electromagnets,
which means it will spin faster.
If you look at some pictures
of real electric motors,
you can see lots of wires wrapped around
and yes, this is the same reason.
More wires wrapped around means stronger electromagnets.
Another way to make this stronger
is to use more electricity.
Let's learn a few more terms here.
The part that doesn't move is called the stator.
In this case, it's the two permanent magnets on the side.
These fit inside the edges of the motor case.
The armature in the middle is also called a rotor.
Remember, this is the part that spins.
The axle goes through the middle here
and then sticks out the back of the motor.
What I've shown you in this video
is called a DC motor.
If you have a device that moves
and is powered by a battery,
there's a good chance there's DC motor in it.
Other types of electric motors
will work a little differently than what I've shown here.
No matter the type of motor,
most of them will produce some type
of spinning motion.
Once it's spinning,
we can use this to make different devices move.
In this case, a kids' toy.
Or even a fan that cools your room.
The spinning of the motor
can be converted to other types of movement,
such as the side-to-side motion that we see in this fan.
Or how about this electric cutting knife?
Each blade is going back and force.
It all starts with the spinning of the motor
to turn a gear,
which then pushes these two pieces back and forth.
So hopefully this video has made a few light bulbs go off
in your brain.
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