Building an Electric Motor

Today in physics class we built a simple electric motor with groups of two. To build the motor, we used:

1. a piece of wood
2. four 4-inch nails
3. two strips of aluminum from a pop can
4. 2 smaller nails
5. a couple pieces of Lego
6. two thumbtacks
7. a kebab skewer
8. a long piece of wire
9. a cork
10. two magnets
11. some tape

The motor took me and my partner most of the period to construct. There were some minor hitches when we were unable to push the kebab skewer through the cork, but we fixed the problem by first hammering a nail through the cork to make it easier to insert the skewer.

Our motor worked based on the motor principle, which is based on the fact that when two magnetic fields interact with each other, a force is produced. In this case, the magnets produce one magnetic field, and the current running through the wires coiled around the cork produces the other magnetic field. In order for the motor to spin continuously, the current must be reversed after every half-turn. This will allow the cork to spin in one direction continuously. Our motor's spin was a bit wobbly and unstable, but it still managed to make quite a few revolutions before the power was turned off. This activity was very fun and allowed us to not only learn about the motor principle, but to apply it in a real life situation.

If we did this activity again, I would fix the motor so that spins more smoothly. I think the reason why our motor was so twitchy was because our aluminum strips were too thick, thereby slowing our motor down. If I did this activity again in the future, I would make the aluminum strips thinner.

Here is a video of our motor spinning:



Here are some pictures of our motor:

Our motor during the early stages of its construction.

Just need to add the aluminum strips...

The finished product.