Does your motor work?

Every week class gets more and more interesting! This week in class we got into partners and had to build a motor, which I would like to add was very fun. My partner and I spent a period building a motor, as did everyone else, and were able to test it at the end of the period. Sadly it did not work the first time, so we took it back, made some adjustments and tried again. And guess what? It failed the second, third and fourth time too. We could not figure out what was wrong with it. We had followed all the instructions on our sheet, and our motor looked like everyone else's. Sadly the period had come to an end, so we had to wait until the next day, Friday, to test our motor again. The materials that we used to make our motor were: a pop can which we cut into strips and sanded, copper wire with sanded ends, nails, wood, bamboo skewers, cork, paperclips and a piece of wood to place our project on. We first got 30 minutes to do all the nailing to the wood, which were 2-3 cm wide and 5cm long, to create a rectangular shape. Then we bended the paper clips so as to create a loop on either side for the bamboo skewer to slid in and rotate. After that, we wrapped the cork in wire, making sure it was going in one direction, and inserted the skewer into it. Once that was taken care of, we nailed two nails into one end of the cork. Then we sanded both sides of the pop can and cut it into two long strips and we attached each to one side of the wood, in between the nails and the paperclip. The skewer was held up with the help of the paper clips. After that, all we had to do was make sure the nails on the cork were touching the two aluminum strips, and we were ready to test! After that you know what happens, but it is the thought of making a motor that counts right? Everyone had so much fun making the motors, and one group even burned theirs (on purpose) after they were done testing it. We learned a lot by doing this activity and hopefully there will be more to come.

Here are some pictures of what my partner and I's motor looked like.

Thanks,

-Peggy.