How to Build a Homopolar Motor Using Neodymium Magnets

Note: This audio transcript is auto-generated and may not be completely accurate.
Hi. This is Andrea from Beadaholique.com. In this video I thought we do something a little different. We're going to do a science experiment. So I stumbled across this and I realize once I got to work that hey we carry all of these items so this would be a fun little experiment to do at work. What you're going to need for this is you're going to need some neodymium magnets which we sell here. This comes in a pack of three and I'm using all three of them stacked together. You need a AA battery. Everybody has one or two of those roaming around their houses I think. Then you need some solid copper wire. Now this is important, not the copper plated or the copper colored craft wire, the solid copper wire. This is twenty gauge but it really doesn't matter. You're going to build an armature and what your armature needs to do is it needs to fit around the magnets but not snugly. There needs to be a lot of wiggle room. It needs to come up and end in a point that is roughly the size of the battery between the point and the base. Just a little bit longer. This is just one of the armatures you can build but you can also build a swirl. I'm show you that in a minute. Now this is called a homopolor motor and I'm not even going to begin to explain how it works. You can look it up online. I did and I still don't quite get it but it's really cool and it's a fun little experiment to do. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to put the positive end of my battery right on the stack of neodymium magnets. Now a note about these magnets they are super duper strong so be careful with them. Always use adult supervision when you are using these magnets and especially when you're building a motor because you are generating power. What you're going to do here is you're going to take your armature balance it right on top there and you're going to let the magnet and the battery do it's thing. Now this is really cool and really fun. If the battery and magnet motor is not spinning the wire they're still electricity being generated so be very careful. If I was to hold this still and it was taking a connection between the magnets and the battery this wire would get very hot. But other than that this is just so cool i think and so much fun. I also made a swirly armature. This one is going to take some practice to get it right to get the balance right. It's going slowly you want to make a connection between the battery and the magnet. That's the key and the copper. There we go. so this will go for quite some time. This a fun little experiment to do with young ones like I said with supervision or if you're just like me and you are highly entertained stuff like this. So once again neodymium magnets from Beadaholique.com, solid copper wire from Beadaholique.com, battery from you junk drawer or your remote control and you have yourself a simple motor. Thanks. Go to Beadaholique.com for all of your beading supply needs!