the motor

     Our task for “Building an electric motor” this project was to build an electric motor and make the commutator spin. This simple motor was basically made of materials such as cork, wires, wood, thumbtack nails, and aluminum pieces. Firstly, we hammered the four nails into the wood, the distance between them was 5cm×3cm, and we bent two paper clips and placed each of them at the edges of the nails, the paper clips are used for holding the commutator. Secondly, we started to make our commutator. We firstly made the Axel went though the cork, the commutator involves two pins placed into the centre of the cross-section of the cork, and then we sanded the end of two side of the copper wire and wrapped the wire around one of the commutator pins around the cork until there was only a little bit of the wire left to wrap around the other commutator pin. The next is the brushes; we used two pieces of pop can instead of the metal brushes. We sanded both sides of the pop can pieces to remove its “insulation”, and we placed it between the paper clip holders and the nails. Thirdly we put our commutator upon the paper clip holders, and make sure the pins touch the brushes when it spins. Finally, we put 2 magnets, one on each side, and connect the power supply to make the motor spin.