Electromagnetic Crane

Most of the electricity you use comes from moving magnets around coils of wire. Electrical power plants either spin HUGE coils of wire around very powerful magnets or they spin very powerful magnets around HUGE coils of wire. The electricity to power your computer, your lights, your air conditioning, your radio or whatever, comes from spinning magnets or wires!

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A science teacher doing a demonstration for his students noticed that as he moved a magnet, he caused one of his instruments to register the flow of electricity. He experimented a bit further with this and noticed that a moving magnetic field can actually create electrical current, thus tying the magnetism and the electricity together. Before that, they were seen as two completely different phenomena! Now we know that you can’t have an electric field without a magnetic field. You also cannot have a moving magnetic field without causing electricity in objects that electrons can move in (like wires). Moving electrons create a magnetic field and moving magnetic fields can create electric currents.

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