My Mini Motor

We created a motor in class using only a long piece of copper wire, a battery, two paper clips, and a magnet. In order to understand how it works, you must first know the function of each part of this motor. The battery was used because it supplies current, the coil of wire was used in order to carry the current, the paperclips were used to support the coil and carry the current, and the magnet was used to pull the wire coil.
     The first thing you need to do is attach the magnet to the battery and bend the paperclips in a way to hold the wire. Then you attach the paperclips to each end of the battery and tie a rubber band around it so that they stay attached. Then you take the long coil of wire and wrap it in an oval, making sure that the sides are parallel and that it is tightly wrapped. You also have to leave about an inch on each side so that the paperclips can hold the coil up. In order for the motor to actually be able to power something, you must take a sharp razor and scrape the wire until you see the silver part. A very key part of this is that you can not  scrape more than one side of the wire. If the motor is scraped all the way around, it will not work. Therefore you can only scrape the wire in one place on both sides. I will explain why later.
     The reason that this motor works is because of the magnetic field created by the current through the wire and the magnet. The magnet is facing up which means that the magnetic field it creates is running from north to south outside the magnet. The wire is perpendicular to this magnetic field, therefore when there is current through the wire there is a maximum force applied to the wire. Because the wire is attracted to this downward force, it is pulled in a direction that is towards the magnet. If you had scraped the entire circumference of the wire, the wire would constantly have a current going through it and therefore stay in a position where it is being pulled towards the wire. However, because you only scraped one part of the wire, the coil is pulled towards the magnet while it has current through it. This creates a torque. Then, once the part that you scraped is no longer touching the paperclips, the force and torque of the current being perpendicular to the magnetic field causes the coil to be pulled all the way back around. Then, the process repeats. Now, you have a motor!!
There are many things you can do now to use this motor. You could attached a small fan, the blades on a blender, and even a small motor cars wheel's! Really anything that spins that needs energy in order to move and be used now, and that's how motors work!