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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When you move a magnet toward a wire, the magnet repels the electrons in the wire. And the electrons in the wire do repeal the magnet in return. (You can do also the opposite)
If you spin a magnet inside a set of wires, the wires want to slow down the magnet while the magnet will push electrons in the wires. These are very small forces. But… if you wind kilometers of wire into coils (poles), put several coils kn a circle, and spin a very powerful electromagnet in the center (has a field equivalent to millions of refrigerators magnets) you can extract a lot of electricity.
Then of course, there’s quirks and tech things and so on, but basically a generator is that: A rotating magnet that induces a voltage into coils around it. An electric motor is the opposite. You can do it both ways, transform a movement into electric power or transform electric power into movement. You just need a power source, like wind water or steam or whatever, to move the generator.
Note: you can flip all things to the opposite, use both repulsion and attraction between currents and magnetic fields, you can use rotating coils and fix magnetic field. That’s just construction quirks to get some advantage in this or that usage or in this or that size.
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