Take something like a drill.
I understand its electric, I understand that in some way the electricity makes sothing move and then that movement is turned into spinning through gears and engineering magic.
But where does the initial movement come from? All i can picture is something is spinning or rotating because something else is rotating. But it has to start somewhere right?
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a very simple model to get you started, imagine you’ve got a rod with 3 magnets sticking out of it, the N of the magnet points outwards.
Now imagine there’s 4 electro magnets equally spaced around it. electro magnets can be turned on and off at will. Right now, the topmost electromagnet is on and attracting the topmost permanent magnet. The 4 electro magnets on the outside and 3 permanent magnets on the inside are critical to visualise here, as it means only 1 permanent magnet lines up with an electro magnet at any one time.
The magnet on the right is now fairly close, but not lined up with the permanent magnet near it. So turn the topmost electromagnet off, and the one on the right on. It will attract the magnet towards it, spinning the rod. Now the permanent magnet is aligned with the spot on the right and the bottom electromagnet is near the next permanent magnet.
Turn off the magnet on the right, turn on the magnet on the bottom, and you’re attracting the new magnet towards it again. keep doing this, energising each electromagnet in turn, and the inner rotor spins.
That’s just a starter for 10, now you can look up the actual designs of different motors and see how they achieve much the same thing.
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