Michael Faraday, Electromagnetic Induction, and Levitating Lightbulbs
Back in the 1800's, we were aware that running a constant current through a wire coil generates a constant magnetic field. This is more or less Lenz's law, the phenomenon exploited in electric motors. (Here's a great video on how electric motors work, btw.)
Michael Faraday, however, had an interesting idea regarding Lenz's law - If constant current means constant magnetic field, would the opposite be true? To test this, he rigged up an experiment that looked like this:
The result was underwhelming at first. When switched on, the current measured zero. But Faraday noticed that there was a spike in the current when at the moments the device was switched on or off. This led him to realize that it is the fluctuation in magnetic field that creates current. This is electromagnetic induction, the principle that is used in basically all of our electric generators. (great video explaining electric generators.) It's also the working principle behind Flyte's awesome levitating light bulb:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMG7x_2CjHI
#elloengineering #engineering #tech
(On a side note: as I looked through various engineering videos to reference in this post, I realized that perhaps it's time for some cooler engineering animations. If anyone's interested in that sort of project, let me know.)
