Faraday’s Law states that changing magnetic fluxes through coiled wires generate electricity (currents and voltage).

Today in class we explored the idea of generators, voltage, and creating energy using magnetic fields and copper coils. We constructed a flashlight that was powered by a small generator. The generator was connected to the computer and the data was fed into an excel sheet. By shaking the flashlight, we generated voltage. The harder we shook the flashlight, the more voltage we created.

The experiment was conducted like this:

1. We shook the tube a different rates,
2. We counted the number of shakes in the data collecting interval (set to 30 seconds),
3. We calculated in Excel the sum of the squares of the generated voltages (SSGV’s) (we took the sum of the squares so that we would have a positive value) (the voltage is logged after each second),
4. And finally, we plotted the SSGV’s as a function of # of shakes and fitted the result to a linear curve (see graph below)

Generators like this are used both on a small scale, such a this, to a large scale that will power cities. The overall concept of the experiment was to show that the more energy we pumped into the generator, the more voltage it created. A modern day generator “uses the mechanical energy supplied to it to force the movement of electric charges present in the wire of its windings through an external electric circuit. This flow of electric charges constitutes the output electric current supplied by the generator” (dieselserviceandsupply.com).

http://www.dieselserviceandsupply.com/how_generators_work.aspx