A comprehensive course that teaches the big ideas behind Maxwell’s Principles. Students will discover how to detect magnetic poles and magnetic fields, learn about electromagnetism as they construct motors, generators, doorbells and earphones, and uncover the mysterious link between electricity and magnetism that marks one of the biggest discoveries of all science…ever.

Step 1. Click Here to download your copy of the Ultimate Science Curriculum Magnetism Student Guidebook. To download the Parent/Teacher Guidebook, Click Here.

Step 2. Watch the videos that go with it below.

Introduction

Greetings, and welcome to the study of Magnetism. This unit was created by a mechanical engineer, university instructor, airplane pilot, astronomer, robot-builder and real rocket scientist… me! I have the happy opportunity to teach you everything I know about electricity and magnetism over the next set of lessons. I promise to give you my best stuff so you can take it and run with it… or fly!

To get the most out of these labs, there are really only a couple of things to keep in mind. Since we are all here to have fun and learn something new, this shouldn’t be too hard.

One of the best things you can do as the student is to cultivate your curiosity about things. Why did that move? How did that spin? What’s really going on here?

This unit on magnetism is chock-full of demonstrations and experiments for two big reasons. First, they’re fun. But more importantly, the reason we do experiments in science is to hone our observational skills. Science experiments really speak for themselves much better than I can ever put into words or show you on a video. And I’m going to hit you with a lot of these science demonstrations and experiments to help you develop your observing techniques.

Scientists not only learn to observe what’s going on in the experiment, but they also learn how to observe what their experiment is telling them, which is found by looking at your data. It’s not enough to invent some new kind of experiment if you don’t know how it will perform when the conditions change a bit, like on Mars. We’re going to learn how to predict what we think will happen, design experiments that will test this idea, and look over the results we got to figure out where to go from there. Science is a process, it’s a way of thinking, and we’re going to get plenty of practice at it.

Good luck with this magnetism unit!

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Lesson #1: Whats Magnetic?

Overview: Greetings and welcome to the study of magnetism! This first lesson is simply to get you to play with magnets and decide what it is that you want to learn about magnetism so we can do the really cool stuff later on.

What to Learn: Your job is to discover not only what “magnetic” means, but also what specific kinds of objects are magnetic. Magnetic fields are created by electrons moving in the same direction. Electrons can have a “left” or “right” spin. If an atom has more electrons spinning in one direction than in the other, that atom has a magnetic field. If an object is filled with atoms that have an abundance of electrons spinning in the same direction, and if those atoms are lined up in the same direction, that object will have a magnetic force.

Materials

  • 1 rectangular magnet
  • 1 circular disk magnet

Lesson #2: Breaking Magnets

Overview: Today, you get to break things and call it science as you investigate one of the fundamental concepts in magnetism that magnetic poles are inseparable.

What to Learn: All magnets have two poles. Magnets are called dipolar, which means they have two poles. The two poles of a magnet are called north and south poles. Opposite poles will attract one another. Like poles will repel one another.

Materials

  • 2 rectangular magnets
  • 1 circular magnet
  • Hammer to break a magnet

Lesson #3: Which Way is North?

Overview: You’re going to use a compass to figure out the magnetic lines of force from a magnet by mapping the two different poles and how the lines of force connect the two. A magnetic field must come from a north pole of a magnet and go to a south pole of a magnet (or atoms that have turned to the magnetic field.)

What to Learn: Compasses are influenced by magnetic lines of force. These lines are not necessarily straight. When they bend, the compass needle moves. The Earth has a huge magnetic field. The Earth has a weak magnetic force. The magnetic field comes from the moving electrons in the currents of the Earth’s molten core. The Earth has a north and a south magnetic pole which is different from the geographic North and South Pole.

Materials

  • Rectangular magnet
  • Circular magnet
  • Compass
  • String
  • Ruler

Lesson #4: Flying Paperclip

Overview: In fields, the closer something gets to the source of the field, the stronger the force of the field gets. This is called the inverse square law. Those atoms are lined up in the same direction, that object will have a magnetic force.

What to Learn: The inverse-square law applies to quite a few phenomena in physics. When it comes to forces, it basically means that the closer an object comes to the source of a force, the stronger that force will be on that object. The farther that same object gets from the force’s source, the weaker the effect of the force.

Materials

  • Four different magnets
  • Paperclip
  • String
  • Ruler
  • Tape

Lesson #5: Bouncing Magnets

Overview: Want to see a really neat way to get magnetic fields to interact with each other? While levitating objects is hard, bouncing them in invisible magnetic fields is easy. In this experiment, students will take two, three, or even four magnets and have them perform their antics.

What to Learn: We’re putting together the ideas of the inverse square law and magnetic fields by having you play with the invisible magnetic lines of force.

Materials

  • 3 identical magnets
  • Optional: thick piece of aluminum metal

Lesson #6: Magnetic Fields

Overview: Today you get to make your own compass to detect the Earth’s magnetic field.

What to Learn: Not only how to build a simple compass and use it to detect magnetic effects, including Earths magnetic field, but also how not to build a compass.

Materials

  • Needle or pin
  • Strongest magnet
  • Small piece of foam (like a packing peanut)
  • Disposable cup
  • Water
  • Compass

Lesson #7: Magnetic Sensors

Overview: Wouldn’t it be cool to have an alarm sound each time someone opened your door, lunch box, or secret drawer? It’s easy when you use a reed switch in your circuit! If you’ve built the burglar alarm from the unit on Electricity, this is a great addition to your stash of top-secret spy alarms.

What to Learn: Today, you get to learn how to wire up and utilize a magnetically-operated switch.

Materials:

  • Reed switch
  • Magnet
  • LED
  • AA case
  • 2 alligator wires
  • 2 AA batteries

Lesson #8: Magnetic Boats

Overview: Today you get to splash around with several compasses at once as you discover how magnets can both repel and attract each other at the same time.

What to Learn: Notice how the magnet boats repel each other when they get too close, yet they hold each other in a pattern. Atoms do the same thing – they repel each other when you try to squish them together, yet hold together to form molecules.

Materials

  • Shallow dish or pie tin
  • Water
  • Foam blocks
  • 6-10 small magnets
  • Large magnet
  • Hot glue gun

Lesson #9: Curie Heat Engine

Overview: We’re going to heat a magnet so that it temporarily loses its magnetic poles, and watch what happens as it cycles through cooling.

What to Learn: Magnetic material loses its ability to stick to a magnet when heated to a certain temperature called the Curie temperature. The Curie temperature for nickel is 380 oF, iron is 1,420oF, cobalt is 2,070 oF, and for ceramic ferrite magnets it starts at 860oF.

Materials

  • Large ceramic magnet
  • Tiny bead magnet
  • Thin copper wire
  • Smooth pen or straw
  • Candle (with adult help)
  • Framework to hold the setup

Lesson #10: Linear Accelerator

Overview: Linear accelerators (also known as a ”linac”) use different methods to move particles to very high speeds. One way is through induction, which is basically a pulsed electromagnet. We’re going to use a slow input speed and super-strong magnets and multiply the effect to cause a ball bearing to shoot across the floor at high speed.

What to Learn: Today you’re going to do an award-winning project (yes, loads of students have used this experiment in science fairs and taken home first prize!) that will teach you how to measure, calculate, record data, and make steel ball bearings fly around the room using momentum and magnetism.

Materials:

  • Wood or plastic ruler with a groove down the center, 12” long
  • Eight thick rubber bands or epoxy for a permanent mount
  • Four super-strong magnets (try 12mm or ½” neodymium magnets)
  • Nine steel ball bearings (1/2”, 5/8”, or other sizes)
  • Measuring tape

Lesson #11: Earth Pulse

Overview: When you stare at a compass, the needle that indicates the magnetic field from the Earth appears to stand still, but we’re going to find how it fluctuates and moves by creating a super-sensitive instrument using everyday materials (for comparison, you would spend more than $100 for a scientific instrument that does the same thing).

What to Learn: Today you get to learn how to amplify tiny pulses in the Earth’s magnetic field using a laser and a couple of magnets. It’s a very cool experiment, but it does take patience to make it work right.

Materials:

  • Index card or scrap of cardboard
  • 2 small mirrors
  • 2 rare earth magnets
  • Nylon filament (thin nylon thread works, too)
  • 4 doughnut magnets
  • Laser pointer (any kind will work – even the cheap key-chain type)
  • Clean glass jar (pickle, jam, mayo, etc… any kind of jar that’s heavy so it won’t knock over easily)
  • Wooden spring-type clothespin
  • Hot glue gun, scissors and tape

Lesson #12: Ferrofluid

Overview: Today going to learn about liquid magnets, also known as ferrofluids. Ferrofluids are what scientists call “colloidal suspensions,” which means that the substance has properties of both solid metal and liquid water (or oil), and it can change phase easily between the two. And make a total mess. What to Learn: Ferrofluids are what scientists call “colloidal suspensions,” which means that the substance has properties of both solid metal and liquid water (or oil), and it can change phase easily between the two. Because ferrofluids can change phases when a magnetic field is applied, you’ll find ferrofluids used as seals, lubricants, and for many other engineering-related uses. Materials:

  • Old toner cartridge from a laser printer or copy machine
  • Strong magnet (neodymium magnets work best)
  • Paper or newspaper
  • Baby oil or vegetable oil
  • Plastic bag
  • Metal bolt with nut and large washer
  • Disposable plastic cup with lid
  • Popsicle stick
  • Medicine dropper
  • Gloves and goggles
  • Adult help

Lesson #13: Braking Magnets

Overview: Today you get to measure, calculate, and be amazed at how magnetism and electricity work together.

What to Learn Eddy currents defy gravity and let you float a magnet in midair. Think of eddy currents as brakes for magnets. Roller coasters use them to slow down fast-moving cars on tracks and in free-fall elevator-type rides. This is a great introduction to the next segment, which is all about how electricity and magnetism are linked together.

Materials:

  • Aluminum block (the thicker the better)
  • Neodymium magnets (get different sizes and/or shapes for each lab group so they can swap and compare)
  • Ruler
  • Stopwatch or clock with a second hand

Lesson #14: Galvanometers

Overview Today is a very important day in your magnetism studies. You will begin to discover how electricity and magnetism cause each other. In the second half of this lab, they’ll get to re-enact one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time: how magnetism causes electricity.

What to Learn Galvanometers are coils of wire connected to a battery. When current flows through the wire, it creates a magnetic field. Since the wire is bundled up, it multiplies this electromagnetic effect to create a simple electromagnet that you can detect with your compass.

Materials:

  • Magnet wire
  • Sandpaper Scissors
  • Compass
  • AA battery case
  • 2 AA batteries
  • 2 alligator clip wires
  • Strong magnet
  • Toilet paper or paper towel tube

Lesson #15: Electromagnets

Overview We’re going to make a magnet (several, actually) that turn on and off using electricity. Today, you get to discover how electric currents produce magnetic fields and how to build a simple electromagnet.

What to Learn An electromagnet is a magnet you can turn on and off using electricity. By hooking up a coil of wire up to a battery, you will create an electromagnet. When you disconnect it, it turns back into a coil of wire. Since moving electrons cause a magnetic field, when connecting the two ends of your wire up to the battery, you caused the electrons in the wire to move through the wire in one direction. Since many electrons are moving in one direction, you get a magnetic field!

Materials:

  • AA battery case
  • 2 AA batteries
  • 2 alligator clip wires
  • 5 nails (2-3” long, rust-free)
  • Magnet wire
  • Paperclips
  • Pencil
  • Chopstick
  • Straw
  • Plastic fork
  • Rubber eraser
  • Tape
  • Compass

Lesson #16: Motors and Generators

Overview Inside your motor are permanent magnets and an electromagnet (the copper thing wrapped around the middle). Normally, you’d hook up a battery to the two tabs (terminals) at the back of the motor, and your shaft would spin. However, if you spin the motor shaft with your fingers, you’ll generate electricity at the terminals. But how is that possible? That’s what this lab experiment is all about.

What to Learn Students will learn the role of electromagnets in the construction of electric motors and electric generators.

Materials:

  • 9-18V DC hobby motor
  • Bi-polar
  • LED
  • 2 alligator wires
  • Propeller
  • Hair dryer (You brought one from home, right?)
  • Optional: Digital Multimeter (DMM) from previous Electricity unit

Lesson #17: Quick N Easy DC Motor

Overview One of the big mysteries of the universe is why we can’t separate the north from the south end of a magnet. No matter how small you break that magnet down, you’ll still get one side that’s attracted to the north and the other that’s repelled. There’s just no way around this! Or is there?

What to Learn Today, you get to find out how magnetic fields interact with each other and cause things to rotate. In this case, we’re using an electromagnet and a permanent magnet so we can turn our motor on and off.

Materials:

  • AA battery
  • 5 different sizes of metal screws
  • 6” insulated wire
  • Very strong metal magnet

Lesson #18: Homemade Relay Shockers

Overview Today, you get to learn how to use an electrical switch that uses magnetism in order to operate. And you can shock yourself silly with this experiment at the end when you turn it into a buzzer.

What to Learn Relays are switches that turn on and off with electricity. They can be NO (normally open) or NC (normally closed), depending on how you hook them up. This relay experiment will actually give a nice blue spark when fired up, along with a nice zap to the hand that touches it in just the right spot. You can also use this relay in your electricity experiments as a switch you can use to turn things on and off using electricity (instead of your fingers moving a switch).

Materials:

  • Relay
  • AA battery case
  • 2 AA batteries
  • LED
  • Motor 9V battery with clip
  • Alligator wires

Lesson #19: Relays and Telegraphs

Overview In this lab, we’re going to build our own relay that will attract a strip of metal to make our telegraph ‘click’ each time we energize the coil.

What to Learn Relays are telegraphs, and they both are basically “electrical switches.” This means you can turn something on and off without touching it – you can use electricity to switch something else on or off, as we did in the last experiment.

Materials:

  • Block of foam about 6” square
  • Sandpaper
  • Alligator wires
  • Battery case
  • AA batteries
  • Film canister or similar
  • 2-4” nail
  • Magnet wire
  • Brass fasteners
  • 1/2″ strip from a steel soup can for the clicker
  • Paper clip
  • Hot glue gun
  • Scissors Tape

Lesson #20: DC Motor

Overview Today, you get to baffle most adults by making a simple motor that really looks like it’s impossible to explain. There’s a sneaky trick to it that makes it work, and will make you look like a genius.

What to Learn You are about to make a simple electric motor that uses both permanent and electromagnets to rotate by interacting with each other.

Materials:

  • Magnet
  • Magnet wire (26g works well)
  • D cell battery
  • Two paper clips (try to find the ones shown in the video, or else bend your own with pliers)
  • Sandpaper
  • Fat rubber band

Lesson #21: Hearing Magnetism

Overview Want to hear your magnets? We’re going to use electromagnetism to learn how you can listen to your physics lesson, and you’ll be surprised at how common this principle is in your everyday life.

What to Learn When a magnet moves next to a coil, it creates an electrical current in the coil. In a microphone, a magnet moves at the frequency of your voice next to a coil, which transmits your sound vibrations to an electrical signal.

Materials:

  • Magnet wire
  • Sandpaper
  • 3 nails
  • 4 different magnets
  • Audio amplifier (RS #277-1008)
  • Audio plug (RS #42-2420)

Lesson #22: Rail Accelerator

Overview We’re going to be making a tiny set of wheel zip down a track. This is how roller coasters and fast trains move down the rail, powered only by magnetism.

What to Learn Two magnetic fields at right angles (perpendicular) interact to each other to causes things to move, spin, rotate, and roll out of the way.

Materials:

  • Cardboard or poster board
  • Aluminum foil
  • Hot glue or double-sided sticky tape
  • Scissors
  • Wire coat hanger
  • Two very tiny, neodymium metal-coated disc magnets (www.kjmagnetics.com Part #D21)
  • 9V battery with clip
  • 2 alligator clip leads
  • Stopwatch
  • Ruler or measuring tape

Lesson #23: Homemade Speakers

Overview We’ll be making different kinds of speakers using household materials (like plastic cups, foam plates, and business cards!), but before we begin, we need to make sure you really understand a few basic principles.

What to Learn An electrical signal (like music) zings through the coil (which is also allowed to move and attached to your speaker cone), which is attracted or repulsed by the permanent magnet. The coil vibrates, taking the cone with it. The cone vibrates the air around it and sends sounds waves to reach your ear.

Materials:

  • Foam plate (paper and plastic don’t work as well)
  • Sheet of copy paper
  • 3 business cards
  • Magnet wire
  • AWG 30 or 32 (RS#278-1345)
  • 2-4 neodymium or similar (rare earth) magnets
  • Disc magnet (1” donut-shaped magnet) (RS#64-1888)
  • Index cards or stiff paper
  • Plastic disposable cup
  • Tape
  • Hot glue gun
  • Scissors
  • 1 audio plug (RS #42-2420) or other cable that fits into your stereo (iPODs and other small devices are not recommended for this project – you need something with built-in amplifier)

Want More Science Activities?

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These videos are samples from my online eScience Learning program. Its a complete science program for K-12. Plus, its self-guiding, so they can do it on their own.

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Thank You!

Thanks for the privilege as serving as your coach and guide in your science journey. May these videos bring you much excitement and curiosity in your learning adventure!

~Aurora

Supercharged Science

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