Making a Motor Lab

(Click here to see the mpeg movie of this lab!)

Purpose:

We wanted to find out if we could make a motor from common materials.

Materials:

1 straw compass built in the last lesson
1 coil of # 22 coated hook up wire, 1.5m long
1 plastic cup and lid
1 piece of # 22 coated hook up wire, 20 cm long
1 battery and battery holder
1 switch
2 rubber bands, No 16

Procedure:

1. You let your homemade compass point (see previous experiment) North and South.
2. You get your wire that's 1.5 m long and you make it into a
coil by wrapping it around your fingers. Leave approximately 10.5 inches from either side of the coil.
3. You get your cup and put the lid on. Then turn the cup upside down. Afterwards you hold the coil to the cup and wrap both rubber bands around the coil and cup.
4. With one end of the coil attach it to the switch and with the other end attach it to the battery holder.
5. Then you get your 20 cm wire and attach one end to the other side of the switch, and the other end to the other side of the battery holder.
6. Put the circuit around 1.5 inches from one of the magnets of your homemade compass.
7. You need to determine which magnet attracts or repels the loop. You do that by pushing down the bolt and if the magnet just stays there that's the magnet that attracts to
the loop. You test if the other magnet repels by pushing the bolt down. If the magnet moves away them that's the magnet that repels to the loop.
8. You press the bolt down until the magnet that attracts to the loop comes around, then you let the bolt go. When the magnet has already passed by the circuit , you go back to
pushing the bolt down. You keep doing that until you want to stop.

Results:

When we did step 8 we saw our compass spin as we let electricity flow through. As long as we turned the switch on and off at the right time the compass straw would continue to spin around.

Conclusion:

We concluded that you can make a motor by
using everyday things. Also that this kind of motor needs electricity to work properly.