Faraday’s Law of Electromagnetic induction and Lenz’s Law

Goal: To investigate the Faraday’s Laws of Electromagnetic induction and Lenz’s Law.
Simulation Used: Faraday’s Law from the PHET at t=he University of Colorado.
Activity 1:
1. Click on the field lines to see them.
2. Move the magnet so that it enters the single loop with its North pole front. In which
direction is the original magnetic field and the induced magnetic field due to the
induced current?
-It’s from North to South, right to left.
3. Note down your observations regarding the induced voltage in the voltmeter (positive
or negative) and the lighting of the bulb when:
a) The magnet is passing into the coil.
- When the magnet is passing into the coil, the lighting bulb starts lighting up brightly
and the voltage in the voltmeter moves to the far right in the positive sign and to the
far left in the negative sign, and there is current induced in coil and the flux through
the loop due the field of the magnet increases; it will be negative though.
b) The magnet stops at one end of the coil.
-When the magnet stops at one end of the coil, the lighting bulb starts lighting up
brightly and the voltage in the voltmeter moves far to the negative or far to the
positive depending, and there is no current induced in coil, in this case it will be
negative.
c) The magnet is moved back out of the coil.
-When the magnet is back out of the coil, the lighting bulb lights up less, it doesn’t
shine, and the voltage doesn’t move as much towards positive or negative, in this
case it will be negative.

Activity 2:
1. Click on the field lines to see them.
2. Move the magnet so that it enters the single loop with its South pole front. In which
direction is the original magnetic field and the induced magnetic field due to the
induced current?
-It’s from South to North, from left to right.
3. Note down your observations regarding the induced voltage (positive or negative) in
the voltmeter and the lighting of the bulb when:
a) The magnet is passing into the coil.
- The flux through the loop due the field of the magnet increases. The current flows
in a direction where the magnet approaching is a south pole; it will be positive.
 b) The magnet stops at one end of the coil.
-There is no current induced in coil; it will be positive.
c) The magnet is moved back out of the coil.
-The current would be induced out of the coil by the physical movement of the
magnetic flux; it will be positive though.

Activity 3:
1. Click on the field lines to see them.
2. Use the set up with two coils.
3. Move the magnet so that it enters the top loop with its North pole first.
4. Note down your observations regarding the induced voltage in the voltmeter
(positive or negative) and the lighting of the bulb when:
a) The magnet is passing into the coil.
-The magnetic field that is created by the induced current would oppose the
changing magnetic flux that created it and it will be negative.
b) The magnet stops at one end of the coil.
-Since it is stopping at one end it wouldn’t have that much current produced and
that would affect the magnetic flux, and work is done against the force of
attraction; it will be negative as well.
c) The magnet is moved back out of the coil.
- The current will be induced out of the coil and it will have a positive sign.
5. What happens when the magnet is inserted in between the two coils? Does the light
bulb light up? Why?
-The light does light up but mainly when it’s at the ends instead of the middle and
this is due to the fact that it opposes the change in magnetic flux.
Write a short paragraph explaining Lens’s law and your online experiment.
-From this lab, I was able to notice that a negative voltage doesn’t physically mean anything, its
reading is just a tool to help us remember Lens’ Law, as this law tells us the direction of current
flow, and it states that the direction is always such that it will oppose the variation in flux that
produced it, so basically the induced emf creates a current that arranges a magnetic field that
acts to face the change in magnetic flux. And regarding the negative and positive signs in the
experiment of Faraday’s law, it has to do with induced emf in the coil that acts to oppose any
variation in the magnetic flux.