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There are many different types of motors in the world. Anything that uses energy to create movement is a motor, and vehicles can use steam (like some trains), gasoline (like cars), or even electricity (like a lot of toys) to create motion. Today, we’re going to build a very simple motor that uses a single battery and the curious characteristics of electricity and magnetism to create motion.
Materials:
- 1 D-cell battery
- 2 large safety pins
- Electrical tape
- 1 magnet (it has to be a bit more powerful than an average refrigerator magnet, and it has to fit on top of the battery)
- 10-12 inches of copper wire
Process:
- Using the electrical tape, attach the safety pins to either end of the battery. You want to tape them on so that the pin cover ends are touching the battery’s contacts, and the loop ends are sticking straight up.
- Start bending the copper wire into a loop about an inch wide with about an inch of straight wire on one end. Keep looping it around until there’s only about an inch of wire on the other end. You want the end of the wire to sit securely in the loop ends of the safety pins. If the loop touches the battery, it’s a bit too big. You can add a bit of electrical tape to the loop to keep it from unwinding if necessary.
- Stick the magnet to the top of the battery between the safety pins.
- Insert the ends of your wire loop into the loop ends of the safety pins and position the loop just above the magnet.
- Give the wire loop a spin. If it stops, move the battery around a bit and try again. Keep experimenting with the placement of the magnet and the loop until it keeps moving once you’ve spun it. You’ve created a mini motor!
Summary
There are a couple of things going on here. First of all, when the copper wire is hanging between the safety pins, it is creating a circuit, a loop of metal (or any other material that conducts electricity) that allows electricity to flow from the negative end of the battery to the positive end. If you had a tiny LED light and touched it to the wire, it would light up. When we add the magnet into the mix, though, we change things up a bit. See, any electrical current traveling through a circuit creates a magnetic field. All magnets already have a magnetic field that surrounds them, with a north pole on one end and a south pole on the other. It’s how they stick to certain metals and how the attract (or repel, depending on how the poles are lined up) other magnets.
When the magnetic fields of the magnet and the copper wire loop are lined up right, a little spin is all it takes to get them interacting with each other. The magnet pulls on one pole of the wire’s magnetic field while pushing its other pole away, and this keeps it spinning until the electricity in the battery runs out (or until someone bumps it and pushes the fields out of alignment).
