Creating a half motor

The Creator Club

First Semester, Second Session

Title: Electric Motors and how they work

Exodus 31:3 “And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding and in knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise cunning works…”

Prayer, asking for the spirit of God in wisdom, understanding, knowledge, workmanship, and safety.

Review:

Review Cells, and Batteries, including Series connections and Parallel connections and the telegraph (how it worked with only one wire. Mention Samuel Morse again…artist and inventor. Show morse code, and Ascii chart, showing that modern computers still send codes as off and on signals.

Imagine hooking up a pencil to the sender, and a moving paper...how this could be used to decode the messages.

Compare the two cell battery to the 8 cell batteries on the work benches.

Draw on paper a circuit of the telegraph sender.

Talk about how magnets are “motors” and “generators” in preparation for this lesson.

Begin to make a buzzer:

Turn out the lights and look at the sparks that show up after the clapper is disconnected. Ask why? (The electromagnet is generating electricity as the magnetic field collapses.

Modify the drawing to make the telegraph sender into a buzzer. Ask the boys what would happen if we wired it like the circuit drawing shows.

Modify the sender using a paper clip and discuss the engineering problem that results.

Alter the design using brass contacts. Show how to form the brass contacts with a chisel. Puncture a hole in the brass contact.

Alter the design using a diode. Explain a little of how a diode works and how it solves the problem of burned contacts. Discuss contacts…silver.

Make half-motor:

Introduce soldering, and coach the boys in soldering paper clips to brass strips.

Wind coil around CPVC fittings, clean enamel off the ends of the wire.

Scrape the enamel off the ends of the wire to commutate the electric current.

Parts of a motor: armature, commutator, magnets.

Show magnetic fields of magnets using Iron filings and magnetite from the old Iron mine on our land.

Show the effects of a magnet on our video monitor screen.

Show the boys the progress on the “real” motor that we hope to build or start building next week.

Show them various types of electric motors: Battery drill motors, DC toy motors, Stepper motors, Servo motors, Vacuum Cleaner motors, record player motors, and others.

History:

The first electric motors

The first commutator-type direct current electric motor capable of turning machinery was invented by the British scientist William Sturgeon in 1832.

Sturgeon was born in Whittington, Lancashire and apprenticed to a shoemaker. He joined the army in 1802 and taught himself mathematics and physics. In 1824 he became lecturer in science at the East India Company College at Addiscombe, Surrey and in the following year he exhibited his first electromagnet.^[2] He displayed its power by lifting nine pounds with a seven-ounce piece of iron wrapped with wire through which a current from a single battery was sent. In 1828 he put into practice Ampere's idea of a solenoid.

Application:

We have all of these tools, wires, nails, boards, and brass shim-stock. They are things that have already been made for us by intelligent and skilled people. How long would it take for something as simple as the telegraph sender or buzzer, or motor to ever come into existence without intelligent creative people putting it all together? Think about it. Do not ever let anyone try to sell you on the idea that complex things can exist without an intelligent creator. Those that believe such things can happen are fools according to the God of the Bible. “The fool hath said in his heart there is no God.” Psalm 14:1