During our Freshman Seminar class on October 26, we performed a Generator Experiment. Ultimately, we were testing the creditability of Faraday’s Law. Faraday’s Law states that if you change the magnetic flux through a coil it will result in a voltage to be “induced” in the coil. This would result it in a voltage and current to be created. We simulated this statement by having a shaking flashlight. The outer casing of the flashlight is transparent and inside this outer shell there is a copper coil with many turns. Also inside the flashlight is a magnet. The magnet is loose and can move freely vertically. By shaking the flashlight the magnet would move through the coil thus producing a voltage and current. We collected the data (voltage being produced) by using a NXT microcontroller, which was running Labview code. A copy of the code can be seen below:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have provided a copy of our data points that we collected during each 30-second trial. In each trial we would increase the number of shakes. In addition, a scatterplot is provided displaying the best-fit line and the coefficient of determination (R2).

 

 

 

As can be observed in the graph as the number of shakes increased, the sum of voltage squared increased as well. The faster the magnet crossed through the coil the more electricity that was being produced. At times the voltage reading was negative and this is because the polarity was changing from positive to negative. In conclusion, our R2 value was 0.96 thus concluding that there is a very strong relationship between the number of shakes and sum of voltage squared.