Hobbies And Interests
Things You'll Need
Instructions
Coil the length of the wire around the D-cell battery several times. Once the coil has been formed, remove the wire from the battery, making sure to maintain its coil shape. Take the ends of the wire and wrap them around opposite sides of the coil to keep the wire in place. Make sure that there is at least 3 inches of wire sticking out on either end of the coil after you're done wrapping.
Use your wire strippers or scissors to strip the protective coating away from each end of the wire coil.
Use the permanent marker to coat each of the exposed wire ends. Coat each end once, then let it sit for about one minute. Then coat each end a second time.
Turn the plastic cup upside down, placing one of the disk magnets on the outside of the cup bottom and the other disk magnet on the inside. Make sure that you are using the right sides of the magnets so that they are attracted to each other and not repelled.
Straighten the outside ends of the large paper clips. You will want to make sure that you only straight the outside ends, and make sure that the remainder of each paper clip still forms a somewhat unbroken oval. Use the large rubber bands to fasten the straightened ends of the paperclips to opposite sides of the plastic cup bottom, so they look somewhat like rabbit ears. These clips will serve as a makeshift cradle for your motor when it begins to move.
Slide the wire coil between the two paper clips so that each end of the coil is resting inside a paper clip. You will want the coil to be just slightly above, but not touching, the magnet on the outside of the cup. This is very important, as this is what will be helping to generate the magnetic field. Twirl the coil after you've settled it into the paper clips, to make sure that none of the wires in the coil will bump into the magnet when the coil begins spinning.
Attach one alligator clip to the base of each paper clip. Make sure that you place the alligator clips just above the rubber bands, as doing otherwise might cause the rubber to dampen the incoming electricity.
Attach the other two alligator clips to the battery. You can clip one onto the bump at the positive end of the battery, but you will likely have to touch the tip of the other clip to the negative end, unless you have some object to hold it in place for you. Give the coil a light tap while holding the alligator clip up to the negative end of the battery. If it doesn't spin correctly, you have to adjust the height and alignment of the paper clips a bit. However, once you've got the alignment right, the coil should begin to spin very quickly on its own as a result of the magnetic field.