What can I do to make my electromagnet stronger?

Question

I am using 14 gauge insulated wire and 2 six-volt batteries. the wire makes 16 turns around a 4-inch long bolt. It's not producing nearly the amount of magnetism I need. Does anyone know how I can make it stronger?

By the way, I'm using this to make an induction coil, and according to my science project page, I want to have many times more turns in the secondary coil than the primary, just wondering if that's true.

Answer 1

There are a couple of things you can do. The easiest things are to increase the number of turns on the bolt. The more turns the stronger the magnet.

Also, the more current through the wire the stronger the magnet. Every battery has some internal resistance that limits the amount of current it can provide. Connecting the batteries in parallel effectively cuts this series resistance in half, allowing more current to be delivered to the electromagnet. Try that.. Adding more batteries also works..

So, you could do this by using more batteries. Also, try connecting the batteries in parallel instead of in series. Be careful though. As you add more power, the windings will get hot enough to cause burns if you touch them.

But, stick with batteries, they're safe.. Don't be tempted to do what i did when I tried this as a kid and put an electrical plug on the end of the winding and plug it into a wall socket (the more power the better, right? lol) If you survive, you'll have a blown circut breaker, a smoked filled room, burned fingers and a lot of explaining to do.. (I know this from first hand experience, since I survived, lol)

Instead of a straight bolt, one thing you can try is to use a U-bolt. Bend the ends of the U-bolt together so that they are almost, but not quite touching. Then, put as many windings as you can around the bolt. Because the ends of the U-bolt are so close, you will develop a strong magnetic field between them. When you have a straight bolt or nail, you're only working with the magnetic field at one end.

One thing you can do is to run some experiments to see what helps and what doesn't. For example, count the number of paper clips the magnet can pick up. Then change the number of windings and do it again. Plot a few points and you'll get a sense of the relationship between the strength of the magnet and the number of windings required. Could do a similar experiment using different numbers of batteries. If you use two batteries instead of one, can you pick up twice as many paper clips? How about three batteries, etc..

Hope this helps,

-Guru

Answer 2

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RE:
What can I do to make my electromagnet stronger?
I am using 14 gauge insulated wire and 2 six-volt batteries. the wire makes 16 turns around a 4-inch long bolt. It's not producing nearly the amount of magnetism I need. Does anyone know how I can make it stronger?

Answer 3

I'll bet it gets pretty warm too ☺

Try using more turns of wire and a larger (both thicker and longer) bolt. Or visit a hardware store and ask if they sell iron fod stock. Get a 1" diameter piece of that about 12" long and it shouldn't cost more than a couple of bucks.

But *definitely* you can use quite a few more turns of wire..

Doug

Answer 4

1. connect your batteries in series so you have more voltage, and thus more current through your electromagnet

2. more coils of wire - to get lots of magnetism you will need hundreds or thousands of coils