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Posted

The core I believe is the nail which is about 4 inches long and smaller than 1/2 inch. I have two seperate wires. I attach them both on the nail and then to the battery

 

It sort of looks like this

 

www(DOT)hometrainingtools.com/misc/Electromagnet.jpg

Posted

Two separate wires? And how many turns of the wire have you managed to create?

Four inches seems pretty long a nail, and what's half an inch? The diameter of the nail?!

 

It could be that the number windings is lower than what would be good, or the fact that your nail is enormous.

Posted

Yes, two wires. Are you suggesting I should just use one big long copper wire and connect both ends to to the battery?

 

Ok,here is a more approximate

 

The nail is .3-.4 cm diameter wise and length is about 2 inches

 

sorry, if it caused any confusion

 

Also

 

Since i'm using the same battery over and over, the energy of the battery would be used up ,right?

 

So the variable would be that the batteries' energy would be drained if i'm correct(I thought of using an dc adaptor but I don't want to change anything right now :))

Posted

Tell you what, use just one copper wire.

 

Wind it a number of times around the nail so as to leave two ends free. Connect these two ends to the battery or the DC adaptor.

 

I would prefer to use a DC adaptor.

Posted

I apologize to the creator of the thread that this is kind of off topic, but I am also creating an electromagnet. It's purpose is to securely hold a regular hotwheel. I was wondering what is the best list of materials that I can use, that is also the cheapest.

Posted
Tell you what, use just one copper wire.

 

Wind it a number of times around the nail so as to leave two ends free. Connect these two ends to the battery or the DC adaptor.

 

I would prefer to use a DC adaptor.

 

Thanks but a curious question

 

Is it because 9 volt is small or am i just not making enough coils. I try 100 coil on the nail and it only manages to pick up 2 paper clips. Is this acceptable or did I do something wrong? It's just that if it acceptable then i'm not going to go any further but it just doesn't seem right. The nail has a .3 cm diameter and the copper wire is .1 cm

Posted
One more question

 

Does a small diameter nail create a stronger field than a bigger nail.

Yes; Assumeing the metal is the same, using the same voltage and having the same number of windings; the field should be stronger in the smaller nail.

Posted
Yes; Assumeing the metal is the same, using the same voltage and having the same number of windings; the field should be stronger in the smaller nail.
- or I suppose more importanly than the same number of windings, is the same length of wire - assuming that the wire is also the same gauge. If the nail has a smaller diameter you will use less wire with the same number of windings, and lose field strength.
Posted
- or I suppose more importanly than the same number of windings, is the same length of wire - assuming that the wire is also the same gauge. If the nail has a smaller diameter you will use less wire with the same number of windings, and lose field strength.

 

well the guage is the same and the amount of wire coiled for each nail is the same as well. I asked a person about my question and he said that as long as the material are the main, the big nail will create a stronger field than the smaller one because it's capacity of magnesitm is bigger.

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted
well the guage is the same and the amount of wire coiled for each nail is the same as well. I asked a person about my question and he said that as long as the material are the main, the big nail will create a stronger field than the smaller one because it's capacity of magnesitm is bigger.

That's probably true to a point. I have no idea how to calculate this; but I'm sure that the same length of wire, and the same source of energy will not energize the entire magnetic capacity of a nail too large for the set up. No doubt someone here at Hypography who is far more knowledgeable than I am about such things, could tell you the formula to maximize the magnetic capacity for any given metal object - Im just a hack.

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