Lucy Ostrowski

March 13, 2018

STEM 6/7th period

Electromagnet Experiment

Objective/Purpose:

Big picture: How do electrical currents influence magnetic fields?

Our experiment: How do the number of copper wire coils influence the strength of the magnetic

field made by an electromagnet?

Background/scope:

What is an electromagnet?

- An electromagnet is a metal core made into a magnet by ​the electric current flowing

through a coil around the said metal core.

from ​www.slideshare.net

This diagram shows the battery that is attached to the wire (green), and how it is wrapped

around the meta core.

How do they work?

 - Electromagnets work because when you connect both the positive and negative sides of a

battery to an insulated wire, the electricity that flows through that wire creates a magnetic

field, and when that wire is coiled around a metal core, the metal core takes on that

magnetic field and becomes a magnet. You can find the direction of the magnetic field by

using the right hand rule. Using your right thumb to follow the direction of the wire, then

your fingers will show the direction of the magnetic field. An electromagnet if different

from a permanent magnet because the fields can be reversed by switching the battery

around, and the strength of the magnet can easily be changed by changing the amount of

electricity that flows through the wire.

Hypothesis: ​If a 32 gauge copper wire is wrapped around a galvanized 3 inch nail 10, 20, 30, 40,

50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 times, then the number of staples able to be picked up by the

electromagnet will increase with each progressive increase of wraps.

Procedure:

1. Acquire materials:

- 3 feet of 32-gauge insulated copper wire, stripped at both ends

- 1.5 volt AA battery

- 3 inch galvanized nail

- 35 Office Depot standard staples in a “single file” line, evenly spaced out

2. Wrap said wire 10 times around 3-inch galvanized nail.

 3. Connect the ends of the stripped wire to the negative and positive sides of the battery. Be

careful not to get shocked when holding raw wire.

4. Holding the wire ends to the battery, touch the wrapped nail to each staple until no more

can be picked up. Stay cautious, because the battery may get hot.

5. Let go of one side of the battery and record amount of staples picked up. Staples are sharp,

so be careful.

6. Repeat procedure, adding 10 more wraps each repetition, until 100 wraps is reached. Make

sure you are recording as you go.

Data / Observation:

# of wraps Test #1 Test #2 Test #3 Averages

10 0 0 0 0

20 1 1 2 1.33

30 6 7 6 6.33

40 14 10 14 12.66

50 15 12 11 12.66

60 27 21 21 23

70 23 12 23 19.33

80 17 21 28 22

90 21 18 28 22.33

100 28 28 32 29.33
As you can see, the number of Office Depot standard staples increases as the number of

copper wire wraps around the 3-inch galvanized nail increases. All of the purple numbers stand
for the number of staples. The blue numbers are the number of copper wire coils around the nail.

One observation that I made was that the numbers do not increase linearly. This may be caused

my lack of surface area on the head of the nail. We used a three inch galvanized nail, so it didn’t

leave us with much room for the staples to stick to the tip. As a group, we concluded that the nail

has some sort of “maximum capacity”, where the number of picked up staples starts to even out.

Analysis / Discussion:

Before making these three graphs, we calculated the averages and the medians of all of our data.

The results are shown in the table below.

Coils: 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
Avrg. 0 1.3 6.3 12.6 12.6 23 19.3 22 22.3 29.3

Med. 0 1 6 14 12 21 23 21 21 28

This graph shows the averages. As you can see, there is an obvious increase in numbers,

although it is not necessarily a steady increase. The y-axis shows the number of lifted staples,
while the x-axis shows the amount of coils. The number of staples starts at zero and somewhat

steadily increases until it reaches almost 30, with an outlier of 23 at 60 coils. This leads us to

further investigation to see what causes this. If the outliers are taken out, there is an obvious

steady increase.

Note: each progressive blue bar marks 10 more coils

Once again, this graph shows an obvious increase in picked-up staples. There are spikes

and drops, but you can easily see the increase in staples. This graph shows the medians of the

data, which is the middle number from each set of data (each set consists of three trials). The

inconsistency of the data could either be caused by human error, or it could show that it isn’t

supposed to be linear, it is simply supposed to increase.

 This is a line graph that shows all of the data points. The graph is split into three colors,

as you can see, and the three colors show each of the three trials. The faded, straight lines are the

trend lines, which shows the increase more steadily. In the bold, jagged lines, you can see a very

obvious outlier that was not expected. The bold lines show the raw data, from each trial. In this

graph, the blue line shows the first trial, the red shows the second, and the yellow line shows our

final and third trial.

All three graphs show similar analysis. They all show that the number of picked-up

staples increases as the number of copper wire coils increases around the nail. Our hypothesis

was that if 32 gauge copper wire is wrapped around a galvanized 3 inch nail 10, 20, 30, 40, 50,

60, 70, 80, 90, and 100 times, then the number of staples able to be picked up by our

electromagnet will increase with each progressive increase of wraps. Our data proves our

hypothesis somewhat correct. By this I mean that we were expecting an increase, which we got,

but we weren’t expecting the outliers that were given to us in our data. This was caused by

human error. A way to fix this in further investigations would be to really make sure that the
techniques in which we were picking up staples stays extremely consistent. Although our data

isn’t 100% consistent, our data does prove this: the more coils of copper wire wrapped around

the nail, the stronger the electromagnet.

Conclusion:

Clear Paragraph

The amount of copper-wire coils around a three-inch galvanized nail positively affects

the strength of the electromagnet, although there are outliers and drops in the data, which we

think is due to lack of surface area on the head of the nail. Our experiment was to test how many

staples could be picked up by our electromagnet, and to see if the number of coils affect the

outcome. To do this, we spread out 35 Office Depot standard staples, and wrapped our 3-inch

galvanized nail with copper wire 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90 and 100 times, testing to see

how many staples could be picked up in between each set of coils. For the averages, at 10-40 and

70-100 coils, the number of staples steadily increased, but at 50 and 60 coils, it stayed same and

then sharply increased, more than expected. This proves that as our independent variable (which

is the number of coils) increased, so did our dependent variable, which is our number of staples.

There are some outliers but this is also shown in our median data. With the medians, there is an

increase from 10-100 wraps, but there were two significant drops in the data. The two drops are

at 50 and 80 coils. We decided as a group that the two drops were either caused by human error,

or because there is not enough surface area on the head of the nail to hold excessive amounts of

staples. According to our data, the greater the amount of copper wire coils, the greater the

strength of the electromagnet, and this matches my hypothesis.