Homemade motor from tin-can, nail, and magnet wire

This is totally refreshing. A nice, innocent request for information. Tim, brace yourself for what the likes of Zick and Andocles and Uncle Al will respond.

I don't know about this project, but I made an isomorphic one, it was a telegraph, a nail pounded into a block of wood wrapped with copper wire and a thin strip of metal coming out over it to form a receiver. A block of wood with a thin strip nailed down at one end and free on the other which can be pushed down to a contact for a sender, all appropriate connections made with copper wire, and a battery in the circuit, of course.

Hofstadter stated that his AHA! moment when he was young was to see 3

3's written out, forming self-reference, thus orienting himself towards that subject for life. Here's an expanded version:

4 4 4 4 4 fours

3 3 3 3 threes

2 2 two twos

1 the most elegant case

How do you show zero zeroes??

My AHA moment was when I was around 3 and asked my Mom what caused day and night, and she took a spherical pincusion she had and put it next to an incandescent lamp, stuck a pin in it and rotated it, showing it go in and out of the light. She only had a high-school education, but she would have made a better teacher than 99.9999999999999999999% of what supposedly passes for one out there now.

So anyway, the usual disclaimer stands. No replies will ever be looked at to this post. While cheating myself out of the good ones, if any, there are just too many Andocleses and Uncle Al's and Zicks infecting this forum like rats out in our barn. What a shame. Might pay to read the final few chapters of Hofstader's "Metamagical Themas" to see what you jerks are cheating everybody out of.

Have a nice day. Address your issues. Please display only appropriate behavior. Define "appropriate" yourself.

Toodle-Lewd-Wench-Sky

EOP

I certainly recall doing the same thing. I think there was even a kit in a little red box that had the wire, etc. and an instruction sheet; the box formed the base.

Maybe something here would suffice:

--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam.  Our true address is of the form che...@prodigy.net.

Hate to reply to myself, but in fact this one looks a bit like what I recall:

--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam.  Our true address is of the form che...@prodigy.net.

Hey! I did that one, too!

--
The e-mail address in our reply-to line is reversed in an attempt to
minimize spam.  Our true address is of the form che...@prodigy.net.

My son has his physics students make this simple motor in class:

All you need is a D battery, paper clips, a small magnet, tape, and some enameled wire (which can be scavenged from an old transformer).

Do a Google search for paper clip motor and you'll find several variations on this design.

I remember building a variation as a child, suspended a bit of stiff wire off a hook, with the bottom dipped into a little mercury in the bottom of one of mums pans (discovered interesting things about amalgams as well that day - Physics AND Chemistry), pop a small disk magnet into the bottom of the mercury and hook up a power supply - NOT A CAR BATTERY, IT BOILS THE MERCURY (I speak from experience).

Probably best done in a well ventilated space.

Regards, Dan.

snipped-for-privacy@trailing-edge.com wrote:

You can simplify it by using one or more of those Neodymium Iron Boron (NdFeB) super strong magnets that you can buy now instead of windings, for the fixed magnets. This way it will go better even if it isn't very well made.

Get a cork for use as a former, and use a piece of heavy gauge copper or brass as an axle, so the axle won't keep sticking to the magnets. First cut two grooves the length of the cork on opposite sides, about 5mm (3/16") deep. Then figure out a way of sticking the copper / brass axle through the axis of the cork. Then wind a few feet of single conductor insulated wire (e.g. conductors out of phone wire) around the cork, up one groove and down the other, repeat until slots are full of wire. Now for the comutator, build up an insulating layer of adhesive tape around the axle on the end that the wires stick out. Build the layer of tape up until it is maybe 1.5mm (1/16") thick. Strip the ends of the wire where they are adjacent to the tape section and somehow tie them to opposite sides of the insulated section of the axle so that each end of the winding is a bare wire running parallel to the axle on diametrically opposite sides, insulated from the axle by the sticky tape but bare on the outside for the brushes to touch. Fit the axle into some bearings which can be just paper clips bent to form small loops which slip over the axle, and fixed to a wooden board or tin can. Now you need to make "brushes" which can be just two more pieces of telephone wire which have the ends stripped and bent so that at a certain angle, one of these wires touches tangentially onto each of the ends of the winding on the commutator. Position a strong magnet so that the pole points radially through the winding towards the centre of the cork when the cork is rotated to the position where that the brushes touch the ends of the winding. It should go pretty well when powered from a single C or D size alkaline cell. You need to spin it gently to get it going.

Chris

If I were a kid, I think I'd rather make the coil by hand. Then the phenomenon of magnetism can be shown.

I also liked making a battery using a potato but I don't recall what I powered.

/BAH

On a sunny day (Fri, 09 Sep 2005 18:44:08 -0500) it happened James Jones wrote in :

Good trick, picture had me baffled for a moment! To shave 180 degr of the isolation :-)

for

I had a clock that was powered by potatos when I was a kid.

Dan Mills wrote in news:dft9cg$evg$1$ snipped-for-privacy@news.demon.co.uk:

As mercury vapor is very deadly, best not done at all.

One would have to be 'mad as a hatter' to play with hot mercury.

It is bad enough at room temperature. If you have a spill in your room and do not clean it all up, and spend a significant amount of time in there each day, you will eventually accumulate enough mercury in your body to cause serious problems. This is because mercury has a high vapor pressure at room temperature.

--
bz

please pardon my infinite ignorance, the set-of-things-I-do-not-know is an
infinite set.

bz+sp@ch100-5.chem.lsu.edu   remove ch100-5 to avoid spam trap

Indeed, when you work in mercury vapours every day, like the mad hatter, it's toxic. However this experiment will not pose a significant risk when done once or twice in a ventilated area.

indeed very clever

Paul (EE)

Jan Panteltje wrote:

This site has two motors: one from 1938 and the other from a boy scout manual. They both look like stuff I built in the '50s. I also have my copy of the "Boy Mechanic" published in 1952 by Popular Mechanics that has "5 Toy Motors" in it: a tin and nail, a synchronus, an induction, series and mercury (yikes). If anyone is interested I will gladly scan the book and foreward the section to you.

Richard

Mike, I checked Amazon and the PM site and found no mention of the Boy Mechanic. I would be really interested in where to get a copy. I've been looking for one since the '60s. Googling it I found that there were originally 4 volumes. Richard

Opps the URL is:

The second page sounds a lot like what you're looking for. Richard

| I checked Amazon and the PM site and found no mention of the Boy | Mechanic. I would be really interested in where to get a copy. I've | been looking for one since the '60s. | Googling it I found that there were originally 4 volumes.

Seems to have volume 1 ...

The public domain is a wonderful thing. If only the US Government would stop selling Disney extensions for Mickey Mouse ...

I fondly remember reading one of these volumes from my dad's bookshelf back in the 70s ...

--
Doug McLaren, dougmc@frenzy.com                      The modem is the message.

Doug, Wow thanks. This Boy Mechanic is similar but not the one that I have. Mine has 500 projects and was published by Popular Mechanics starting in 1913 to

1952 (the one I have). It seems to be projects out of old PMs. The one from Gutenberg is wonderful. I love the front illustration of the kid strapped into a Wright type glider and the illustration of the glide path over RR tracks and houses. Can you imagine! Modern kids were disappoionted that their Harry Potter brooms wouldn't fly. I'd love to get Vol. II. Richard