The other night tw34k showed me a video on youtube where a guy built a simple "homopolar motor" out of a few neodymium magnets, a AA battery, and a well bent piece of solid core wire.
So yesterday I went to the hardware store and found a found neodymium magnets and built my own.


You can build your own in just a few minutes and show it to your friends.
If youre hanging out with somewhat intelligent people, they will find it pretty clever.
If youre hanging out with really dumb people you can tell them that it is magic, and they will be very impressed.

 

So, what you are saying it's a win/win. Can't see YT at work but will check back later.

 

cool, thats awesome

my kids and adult friends will think thats great.

I have those neo magnets in my oil filters of my moto-X and atvs.

I use a thick (maybe 7-8mm) hard drive magnet on the outside of all my on-road vehicles oil filters. Hmm - I should start a thread on it and not clutter this up

 

thats a pretty good idea, my buddy just took about 10 HDD apart and salvaged the magnets

If you have any round ones you can build one of these and post it up

 

If you're carrying around neodymium magnets... well...

 

Ha, that's awesome.
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My wife works in an after-school care program and is always looking for cool projects to do...gotta dig out some old HD's and crack them open.

 

I just tried it and couldn't make it work. What's the trick?

 

The magnets in HDD are shaped like a human kidney and won't allow for much spinning.

If you do bring them to the daycare hand them out and hang around and listen to the sound of weeping, wailing and lamentation as those magnets are no respectors of small innocent fingers.

They pinch they bite, they pinch pinch pinch, bite bite bite, the neodyium show.......

 

Is the bottom part of the wire making contact with the magnets? you have to have it dragging along, like the brushed of a motor to complete the circuit for the electromagnet (the wire)
If youre using ceramic magnets (the black kind), they may not be very conductive so youll have to wrap them in aluminum foil.

 

Keep in mind if you're doing this with kids, the wire and battery will burn your hands if you have a small gauge wire and do it wrong. Just saying from experience.

 

Yah, the battery gets cookin hot

 

A little off topic, but I loled at this:

 

Does it have to be an AA battery?