Rotational Behavior of a Magnetic Torsion Pendulum in a Helmholtz Coil

Cody Goolsby
Department of Physics, University of Southern Maine 96 Falmouth Street, Portland, ME 04104-9300 (Dated: November 16, 2011)

A Helmholtz coil is traditionally used if one wants to produce a uniform magnetic eld over a given volume of space. As shown in Fig. 1, a Helmholtz coil consists of loops of wire seperated by the radius of the loops.

FIG. 1: A Helmholtz coil.

FIG. 2: Compass aligning itself with the Earths magnetic eld.

When a current is supplied through the wires a relatively uniform magnetic eld is produced in the center of coils. Such a Helmholtz coil was used in an intermediate physics lab to determine the torisonal constant, moment of inertia, and other variables for a magnetic torsion pendulum (MTP). During the lab session, we noticed obstensibly abberant rotational behavior of the MTP which devianted from how we expected the MTP to behavior. Our MTP nominally acts just like a compass in the Earths magnetic eld as shown in Fig.2. The Earths eld can be parsed out into its horizontal and vertical components (Fig. 3).

FIG. 3: Vector rendering of the Earths horizontal and vertical magnetic eld.

For the pendulum we were working with, it would initially align itself with the horizontal component of the Earths eld when there was no current in the Helmholtz coils (Fig.4 and Fig.5).

FIG. 4: Pendulum in the Earths eld.

FIG. 5: Alignment of pendulum in the Earths eld.

We then thought as we increased the current in the Helmholtz coil the Earths magnetic eld would be cancelled out by the coils eld, thus causing the pendulum to ip (Fig.6 and Fig.7).

FIG. 6: Pendulum aligning with the coils eld after nulling out the Earths eld.

FIG. 7: Pendulum ligned with the net magnetic eld from the coils and the Earths magnetic eld.

We expected as the current was increased in the Helmholtz coil that the pendulum would ip around instantly as soon as the coils eld overpowered the Earths eld. Instead we observed the pendulum slowly rotating and not as we predicted an instanteous alignment with the persumed nulled out Earths eld. In order to investigate this seemingly abnormal behavior we needed to have a complete picture of the interplay between the Earths and Helmholtz coils magnetic elds between the coils.

Electronic address: cody.goolsby@maine.edu