Book 21, Question 106
How Can Spinning a Magnet Make Electricity?
A spinning magnet can make electricity! That is how most of the power that lights your home gets made. A bicycle light often uses a small generator called a dynamo.
More fun facts
- Magnetic fields can push and pull on electrons.
- Metals like copper and aluminum hold some electrons loosely, so a moving magnet can push them along a wire as a current.
- Michael Faraday built the very first electricity generator, called a Faraday disk.
- In a basic generator, a spinning shaft called a rotor turns inside a ring of insulated wire coils called a stator.
- The rotor in a big generator is itself a magnet made with electricity, called an electromagnet.
- Hydroelectric plants use falling water, and wind turbines use moving air, to spin their generators.
- Some power plants use the leftover heat from making electricity to warm buildings and water.
Questions kids ask
Why are most things not magnetic?
In most objects, electrons spin in random directions, so their tiny magnetic forces cancel each other out.