Unit blog magnets

This unit was about magnets. We began by learning about the anatomy of magnets. The source of all magnetism is moving charges. There is a north pole and south pole in a magnet and the magnetism flows from north to south and opposite poles attract. But the poles of earth are quite deceptive. The north pole on earth is actually the magnetic south pole, oh yeah and earth is a huge magnet. The magnetism of earth causes strange events like the northern lights. We then learned about forces on a magnetic field, we easily memorized the directions of forces, currents and magnetic fields using the right hand rule. We reinforces the concepts of forces on a magnetic field by creating a motor. We had a battery with a magnet, paper clips and a current carrying wire. We wanted to convert electrical power into mechanical energy. Here is the video of my motor

 

We were able to redirect the force upwards using the right hand rule and move the current carrying wire in rotation. The current moved side to side and the force moved up rotating the wire up. We then learned about electromagnetic induction. When a magnet runs through a coil of wires a current is induced. Traffic lights and credit card readers utilizes this. The cars a magnets and there are coiled wires connected to the light right by the stop. We reinforced this knowledge with our wind motor project.

The process of turning AC current into DC current is creating a generator. The number of coils can change the voltage put into the source. Decreasing the coils in the second set increases the voltage and vise versa, it's directly proportional. When the number of coils in the system are two different numbers that is making a transformer, this way only a certain voltage and current gets to an appliance for safety reasons.