Magnetic Fields Due to Currents

Professor Mason showed that when a magnetized metal is heated it will lose it's magnetism. This is due to the fact that when an object is heated its molecules speed up, causing the dipoles to also move out of their magnetized orientation.

Here we showed that when you magnetize a metal you are simply causing all of its poles to point in one direction, which gives it an attraction. We also figured that to destroy a magnet you would either need to get it hot in order to cause the all of it's molecules to move at a high rate or hit it really hard with something like a hammer. We also determined how to solve for the electric dipole moment.

Here we were able to get these wire loops to spin by running a current from the batteries through the wires. The magnet below created a force vector which cause the wire to spin upwards. The momentum of the spin would keep the wires spinning when it was completely parallel to the magnet and then as soon as there was any angle between the area vector and the magnetic field the process would repeat.

We talked a bit about the tiny motors that run various little devices. The first things to likely break are the Commutator and the brushes. We also talked about how the current direction could affect the rotation of the motor.

In the above 3 pictures Professor Mason ran a current through a pole surround by compasses. The compasses would react based on the direction of the current. The magnetic field would go in a counterclockwise direction and when the current was reversed the field went in a clockwise direction.

In the top two pictures Professor Mason ran a current through the wires and he used a 3 dimensional compass to show which way the field would point at various locations on the setup.

This board picture showed which direction the magnetic fields would go in the board setup and the compass setup. We also derived equations to determine the magnetic field, and the comparison between a magnetic field and an electric field.