Background
In this unit we talked about Electromagnetic induction, which is the basic principle behind our working wind turbine. Electromagnetic induction occurs when a magnet is moved through or over a coil of wire. This movement changes the magnetic field of the loop of wire, which, in turn, induces a current. We applied electromagnetic induction to credit cards, stop lights, metal detectors, and even electric guitars. It’s amazing how something as simple as the movement of magnets through or over coils of wire helps power many aspects of our lives. Knowing how Electromagnetic Induction works allowed us to formulate and plan the most effective set-up of our wind turbine
Materials/ Methods
-Materials: wood base
-3 dowels rods (2 square, 1 circular)
-1 philips head skrew
-1 fish eye hook
-1 plastic bottle
-16 magnets
-4 washers
-cardboard
-We began with drawing a circle on the wooden base board. The circle is important to do as your first step because it shows how wide the structure will be. We then drilled the screw into the center of the circle ( not completely in).
-Next we built the structure that we would be holding the turbine. We glued two square dowel rods on either side of the circle and then glued another piece of the dowel rode connecting the two pieces. Before you attache the top dowel rod you must drill a small hole into the very center of the rod and then screw in the fish eye hook.
-After we did that we printed out the wind turbine stencil and cut out cardboard that fit the stencil perfectly.
-We then cut the top and bottom off of a liter bottle and glued the ends to the cardboard, and cut off the excess plastic.
-We then sharpened the end of the dowel rod and poked it through the water bottle piece.
-After that we build the magnet base. In ordeer to build it all you have to do is cut out two circles that are the same size, glue four washers in opposite corners and then put 4 magnets on each washer. MAKE SURE THE MAGNETS ARE FACING THE SAME WAY!!!
-Then you put the sharpened circular dowel rod through the plastic bottle piece and cardboard magnetic piece, but the rod through the eye hook and put the pointed end on the screw.
-Lastly we coiled the wire. I recommend having four different coils (make sure wire is going same direction)
-we tried one large wire and it produced electricity but not as much as the four separate coils.
-Then you take off the plastic at the end of the wires.
* The exact cm are not crucial to your design you just must keep in mind how wide/tall your bottle is
Results/Discussion
By the end of our project we had tried many different variations of our original setup. Due to faulty voltmeters we were getting incorrect readings of our voltage, to fix this we changed little parts of our build. We started with four coils of 200 rotations of wire and one magnet per washer. We ended with the same coils but four magnets per washer. This helped our voltage a ton! In between our starting setup and our ending setup we tried one large coil of 100 rotations of wire, one large coils of 200 rotations of wire, and then we added the two coils together making two large coils of 300 rotations of wire. None of these variations worked, so for one last try we tried our 4 coils of 200 rotations of wire again. This, with the new voltmeter, gained about 7 volts! This allowed us to be successful in lighting the LED light bulb which required 1.9 volts.
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