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I have a couple of questions about Physics...

I have a school science project and need to know if you can focus or concentrate the magnetic field of an electromagnet to attract a small paper clip that is about 20 to 30 centimeters away behind a glass or plastic window.

Is bigger or smaller gauge wire better to make a stronger and bigger magnetic field?

Thanks!

a reply to: ATSAlex
Wrong place.
Do your own homework.

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: ATSAlex
Wrong place.
Do your own homework.

If he reads the answer here or in a book, whats the difference?

a reply to: MrMasterMinder
It's a science project. That means he's supposed to experiment.
You know...hypothesis...test...

originally posted by: Phage
a reply to: MrMasterMinder
It's a science project. That means he's supposed to experiment.
You know...hypothesis...test...

How about ask questions..? Stand on the shoulders of giants..

originally posted by: ATSAlex
I have a school science project and need to know if you can focus or concentrate the magnetic field of an electromagnet to attract a small paper clip that is about 20 to 30 centimeters away behind a glass or plastic window.

If the electromagnet is strong enough, you wouldn't have to concentrate the magnetic field, a superconductor based magnet can probably attract a paper clip at a greater distance than that with no problem.

Focusing a weaker magnetic field isn't easy, but this article talks about something along those lines, though it doesn't sound like something you could build for a school project:

Magnetic shell provides unprecedented control of magnetic fields

A general property of magnetic fields is that they decay with the distance from their magnetic source. But in a new study, physicists have shown that surrounding a magnetic source with a magnetic shell can enhance the magnetic field as it moves away from the source, allowing magnetic energy to be transferred to a distant location through empty space.

Is bigger or smaller gauge wire better to make a stronger and bigger magnetic field?

This covers the math but there's more to consider than just wire thickness.

Calculating the strength of a magnet

The number of turns, voltage and current available in your power supply, space constraints, cooling available etc are all factors to consider, and you can try different parameters and crunch through the numbers using the math at that link. If you make the 28 gauge wire example they discuss it's going to get HOT which is why they talk about cooling it with liquid helium, but that's probably about the strongest magnetic field you can make without superconductors, because it's near the upper limit to the magnetic field strength you can get from an iron core electromagnet. You probably need superconductors to get stronger fields than that.

What happens in this scenario ? Take a 6 inch dia. iron tube .25 inch thick by 12" inches long. Put a coil inside the inner dia. that is wrapped like a microwave transformer coil with magnet wire. Put another iron tube .25" inch thick inside that one with a 3/8 gap between the two iron tubes , Weld together to a base iron bottom before you put in the coil making sure that the coil takes up most of the space inside, BETWEEN the two iron circles on bottom. Drill a small hole on the bottom small enough for a wire, from one end of the coil to go thru and insulated from the iron and sealed . This wire exits in between the two iron tubes. Drill a hole in the center of the top before you put on and seal a plexiglass top. This is where the other wire from the coil exits and is sealed, but just inside the plexiglass the wire is stripped bare about an inch. Add distilled water to the inside dia. only, no water in the coil. Do NOT fill to the top. Seal this with some form of glue and rubber so that you can vacuum seal the inside. Drill a hole and add a fitting so you can vacuum seal the can. Now drill another hole in the center of the side that goes thru both tubes AND is insulated and sealed from the tubes and the insulation on the wire that goes into the center of the tubes is stripped 1/2 inch. Properly vacuum seal the can and let the glue dry. You need the inside vacuum sealed. OK , NOW THE QUESTION. I have already tested what happens when you put a 3 volt charge on a microwave oven transformer, THE LARGER COIL ONLY. I put the battery's on the coil, BUT I did not think I would get a nice GOOD SIZED ZAPP it took me totally by surprise and it zapped me only when I took the battery off the coil. Now I know that you can transferre power/electrical current thru a magnetic field from one coil to the next. But I HAD NO IDEA that that coil would give me such a powerful ZAPP on a lousy 3 volts. I tried this with a 9 volt battery and to my surprise it didn't work at all, no ZAPP.
Sorry OK, back to my question. Since the microwave oven coil gave me such a zap I was wondering if I pulsed a current thru the coil it would create a magnet in the water and the pulsed SHOCK current would go thru the water and into the stripped side of the coil wire . MY QUESTION IS. would you get an even more shock from the wire coming out from the side using a 12 volt battery ? My Palms were a bit sweaty that day and that is what gave me this shocking idea.
IF so, do you think I would get more power out than 12 volts ?

a reply to: operayt
First, paragraphs are your friend.
Second, the human body isn't a calibrated instrument for measuring electricity. If I put a 9V battery contacts on my dry skin I feel nothing but if I put them on my tongue I feel something. You mentioned the sweatiness of your palms and yes salty sweat is something which can increase your conductivity but whether more electricity flows through your body or through the salty sweat on the surface of your skin depends on a number of factors.

I HAD NO IDEA that that coil would give me such a powerful ZAPP on a lousy 3 volts. I tried this with a 9 volt battery and to my surprise it didn't work at all, no ZAPP.

So why do you think that is? There must be some other variable besides voltage, right? Maybe current, or the amount of time the voltage was applied, or the conductivity of your skin or body. I can guess the performance of your 9V battery but I have no idea what you used to supply the 3V or how long those voltages were applied.

would you get an even more shock from the wire coming out from the side using a 12 volt battery ?

If you answer your question based on your experimental results so far, since 9V gave you less of a shock than 3V, then you might reason that 12V would be even less, but of course you're overlooking some variables. So in order to answer your question, you need to identify the other variables. WHY did 9V shock you less than the 3V? Current difference? Time factor difference? Difference in your skin conductivity?

Yes, circuits with coils can store energy. This shows how to calculate the energy stored in a coil.

do you think I would get more power out than 12 volts?

12 volts is a measure of neither power nor energy, it's a measure of voltage. Yes with transformer circuits you can get more voltage out than voltage in, but not more energy out than energy in. You might get more power out than power in if the output power is a brief discharge while the input power was applied for a longer period of time so again the total input energy is always greater than the total output energy because of ohmic and other losses.

do electrons vibrate or wobble when they travel or move?

a reply to: BASSPLYR
We believe that electrons have no internal structure, they are essentially point particles. Some particles that do have internal structure will behave like a blob of Jello and wiggle as they move forward. To my understanding an electron just moves as a point mass according to forces applied.

By applying a suitably structured set of external forces you can get the electron beam to meander. An undulator comes to mind. But there the electrons are changing directions under external influences, not by their nature.

A de Broglie wavelength implies no wiggle-wobbling, either.

originally posted by: Pirvonen
a reply to: BASSPLYR
We believe that electrons have no internal structure, they are essentially point particles.

Yes, spatially, but there is an internal space of spin, and that internal space can rotate as particles move.

Electrons aren't quite just a featureless dot at x,y,z,t, they are a complex pair at x,y,z,t

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: Phage

yeah but God don't play dice. what's the underlying principle behind why there's a up or down spin.

The quantum fields which describe an electron have an internal 'vector' structure and there is some symmetry in equations of motion there. Electromagnetic fields have more components and they can the have more spin (called polarization) but then relativity gets in the way and eliminates one possibility.

In practice, if electrons had zero spin then life would be literally boring, as there's no exclusion principle, and everything chemically acts like hydrogen.

Sound in solids with interesting stress-strain relationships (as in earthquakes) also can have "spin" or polarizations and they even travel at different velocities, and that's because the fields of elasticity in real solids aren't just a single scalar for pressure (as in a classical fluid).

The pattern is: fields with more internal components lead to more interesting behaviors & structure.

Why the fields have the structure they do? Take it up with the sperm of Zeus, mister big bang.

a reply to: mbkennel

So they do vibrate? If so, then here's my crazy speculation and I would like your thoughts MBK. Could it be possible that an isolated Electron vibrates because there is a cloud (possibly) of positron potential that's too low to manifest. But still interacting in a tinsy way with the electron. The positron mass is what probably a tenth of the electrons. So could that tinsy mass be tugging on the electron making it wobble or vibrate a hair. Sorta like say if the solar system was just the Sun and Mercury. Mercury's tiny mass would make the sun wobble just a little bit. Now I'm not sure if vibrating electrons means that for each vibration there is a photon ejected or something and if isolated electrons in a vacuum do that. But if they don't could it be because the positron potential cloud is so weak that not even a real photon ejects. Maybe virtual photon potential or something. I dunno. Stuck at work and a conversation with you guys is better than a conversation with my coworkers.

Thanks MBK,

your answers always seem to make sense and help me understand better. Always appreciated.

originally posted by: mbkennel

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: Phage

yeah but God don't play dice. what's the underlying principle behind why there's a up or down spin.

The quantum fields which describe an electron have an internal 'vector' structure and there is some symmetry in equations of motion there. Electromagnetic fields have more components and they can the have more spin (called polarization) but then relativity gets in the way and eliminates one possibility.

In practice, if electrons had zero spin then life would be literally boring, as there's no exclusion principle, and everything chemically acts like hydrogen.

Sound in solids with interesting stress-strain relationships (as in earthquakes) also can have "spin" or polarizations and they even travel at different velocities, and that's because the fields of elasticity in real solids aren't just a single scalar for pressure (as in a classical fluid).

The pattern is: fields with more internal components lead to more interesting behaviors & structure.

Why the fields have the structure they do? Take it up with the sperm of Zeus, mister big bang.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: mbkennel

So they do vibrate?

Does the second hand of your watch vibrate? If you see both x and y coordinates you call it rotation. But if you measure only x(t), then you would see a sine-wave and call it 'vibration'.

Think (sort of) as a tiny watch hand twirling inside the electron, but in a private 2-d, not 3-d space that's attached to every point in x,y,z space. And each of the 2 components is a complex number (itself, two real components).

If so, then here's my crazy speculation and I would like your thoughts MBK. Could it be possible that an isolated Electron vibrates because there is a cloud (possibly) of positron potential that's too low to manifest.

The sea of virtual particles and things like that do have an effect in QFT, interactions renormalize the 'bare' mass, but the spin comes straight out from the basic field itself before you consider these additional interactions.

But still interacting in a tinsy way with the electron. The positron mass is what probably a tenth of the electrons. So could that tinsy mass be tugging on the electron making it wobble or vibrate a hair. Sorta like say if the solar system was just the Sun and Mercury. Mercury's tiny mass would make the sun wobble just a little bit. Now I'm not sure if vibrating electrons means that for each vibration there is a photon ejected or something and if isolated electrons in a vacuum do that. But if they don't could it be because the positron potential cloud is so weak that not even a real photon ejects. Maybe virtual photon potential or something. I dunno. Stuck at work and a conversation with you guys is better than a conversation with my coworkers.

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
Could it be possible that an isolated Electron vibrates because there is a cloud (possibly) of positron potential that's too low to manifest. But still interacting in a tinsy way with the electron Maybe virtual photon potential or something. I dunno. Stuck at work and a conversation with you guys is better than a conversation with my coworkers.

Whoa, there, back off Newt, you're heading towards the "naked charge" alfalfa field.

a reply to: Bedlam

Whats the "naked charge?" was is some debunked nut job theory? Could you explain what you mean a little better other than Nope, wrong, that's crazy talk.

Besides, like I said talking to you guys is way more enjoyable than not.


update: I googled "Naked Charge theory physics" but all I'm getting is some sciam article on naked singularities.

New update: You talking about a Bare Charge? That's something I can google and learn about or is it a waste of time to look into Bare Charge. And is that Naked charge the bare charge referred to in QED or something else?

originally posted by: BASSPLYR
a reply to: Bedlam
New update: You talking about a Bare Charge? That's something I can google and learn about or is it a waste of time to look into Bare Charge. And is that Naked charge the bare charge referred to in QED or something else?

Naked/bare charges and vacuum polarization. The actual charge on an electron may be a lot more than '1'.

a reply to: Bedlam

So was my above posted theory Quackery, cause I've googled high and low for a reference to "alfalfa fields" to understand the term in the context you used. It seems to be specific to you in usage. Whats it mean the phrase?

and yet another question about electron as it is being discussed anyway.

What is life span of a single electron say when it travels in space? If I emit electron here on Earth would the detector register it few hundred parsecs away? (given I can aim my electron gun really well). Lets assume there is nothing on its way but my detector.

another question is how do I turn off members avatars being displayed? Graphics slow my pages to load.