It has always been a question of mine that ive never gotten answered in a way that I understand. Like, how do you go from motion in my generator to electricity for my toaster? how does the energy go from spinny-magnet in the box outside to lightning in my walls? I don’t understand.
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Electric power comes from the flow of electrons through a wire. If you want to create flow, you can either make a battery, or you can INDUCE flow with magnets. Electrons have electric fields around them just like magnets have magnetic fields, and these two types of field interact.
The actual math behind this interaction is quite complicated but it can be roughly summarized as: “motion in one field creates perpendicular motion in the other field.” The effect of this is if you spin magnets around a metal wire, they induce an electric current through that wire. The opposite is also true: if you “spin” electrons around a metal rod by coiling a wire around it, it creates a temporary magnet (called an electromagnet).
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