In high school I learned that gas for coal, wind for wind mill, and tide for water, cause a turbine to spin and that powers an electrical generator and then boom we have electricity. What I want to know is how does the generator convert the kinetic energy of the turbine into electrical energy.
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These people have mostly explained it, when a wire feels a change in magnetic field, a current is generated in the wire. Most of the math is figuring out what change in magnetic field gets you desired current push, but one question might immediately arise, why does this not violate conservation of energy? For example if I have a magnet and drop it, that’s a changing magnetic field and if I have a wire nearby current would be generated creating electrical energy. Where did this come from, and how does the system change if I don’t have a wire to pickup the energy?
What happens is a Lorentz force is created on the magnet, so the wire actually slows down the magnet as it falls! This is a transformation of magnet’s kinetic energy into electrical energy, and without the pickup wire this force isn’t there so the object simply falls faster.
Most generators work with a rotating magnet in or near some wires, and this works essentially the same way, it gets harder to rotate the magnets if the coils are present.
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