Daniel Bazikian

March 16, 2018

Physics/Engineering

Lab Write Up for Electromagnet Experiment

Purpose: How do electrical currents influence magnetic fields?

How does concentration of copper wire in coils influence the magnetic force of the nail?

Background: An electromagnets affect is due to electricity. When you run an electrical current

creates a magnetic field making the wire an electromagnet. The difference between and

electromagnet and a regular magnet is that you can increase or decrease the power of the

magnetic by controlling the supply of electric current. You can control the power of magnetism in

an electromagnet

Hypothesis: If wires of 32 gauge insulated copper are wrapped around a 3 inch galvanized nail

in higher concentration, 2, 4, 5, 10 layers, then due to this greater density of copper wires,

magnetic charge will be much stronger than that of other lesser densities.

Procedure:

Materials tested:

3-nails(galvanized), 3-sets of copper wires(100 coils length)(32 gauge), 1-D battery,

30-paperclips, 30-staples

Other materials needed:

1-scale, 1-table, 1-pen/paper

Steps:

1) Wrap 32 gauge insulated copper wire around one of the 3 inch galvanized nails 100

times. (ensure the coils touch but stay in one even layer leave about 8 inches to connect

battery on each side)

2) Wrap 32 gauge copper wire around another identical nail(galvanized) 50 times then

wrap over the previous layer another 50 times(ensure layers touch but don’t overlap)

leave 8 inches.

3) Wrap 32 gauge copper wire around another galvanized nail 25 times then wrap over

previous layer another 25 times, repeat 2 more times to get 4 layers of wire. (ensure

layers touch but don't overlap) leave 8 inches.

4) Wrap 32 gauge copper wire around the last galvanized nail 20 times then wrap over

previous layer another 20 times, repeat 3 more times to get 5 layers of wire. (ensure

layers touch but don't overlap) leave 8 inches.

5) Wrap 32 gauge copper wire around the last galvanized nail 10 times then wrap over

previous layer another 10 times, repeat 8 more times to get 10 layers of wire. (ensure

layers touch but don't overlap) leave 8 inches.

6) Place the staples and paperclips in pile.

7) Take the 1 layer nail and connect the two ends to the battery on the positive and

negative sides.

8) Hover the nail over the pile of staples and paperclips about(3mm) and try to pick up as

many paperclips and staples.

9) Move the nail with the paperclips and staples away from the pile (trying not to disconnect

any) hold for 5 seconds, any that fall of put back into pile.
 10) Now make a seperate pile of staples.

11) Take the separate pile of staples picked up by the magnet and measure in grams the

pile and record.

12) Return the measured pile back to regular pile.

13) Repeat steps 7-12 with magnet 2, 4, 5, and 10 layer.

Data:

Trial 1 Trial 2 Trial 3 Trial 4 Trial 5 Average

1 Layer 0.9 grams 2 grams 2.7 grams 1.4 grams 1.7 grams 1.74 grams
2 Layers 1.7 grams 2.2 grams 3.1 grams 2.15 grams 2 grams 2.23 grams
4 Layers 3.6 grams 1.8 grams 2.5 grams 2.8 grams 2.75 grams 2.69 grams

5 Layers 3.1 grams 2.5 grams 4.6 grams 3.4 grams 3.2 grams 3.36 grams
10 Layers 2.8 grams 2.83 grams 3.1 grams 2.8 grams 2.8 grams 2.866 grams
Analysis: The data we took by doing trials for the most part doesn’t support the claim that the

more layers of 32 gauge copper coils the more mass we pickup. However there is a catch.

There is a peak of amount of layers that picks up the most mass. And based on the graphs

above, that we made with our data. We found that the peak is less than 10 layers but greater

than or equal to 5 layers. Now of course our data as inaccuracies in our data such as some

trials have less force application to staples and paperclips which might conclude in less mass

picked up. And also some cases pushing staples and paperclips into nail to pick up more and in

others trials not. But based on our data(which has inaccuracies) my hypothesis is more wrong

than right. I was right for the 1, 2, 4 layer trials where the amount of mass kept increasing. But

we had the thought that maybe the mass picked up wouldn’t be infinitely increasing with the

more . So we did further investigation and tested 5 and 10 layer trials and only then did we

realize there was a peak and my hypothesis was proven wrong. From layers 4 to 5 there was
still a rise in mass picked up. But at 10 layers the grams decreased from 5 layers but was still

higher than 4 layers. Our errors and a way to improve the lab would be to be consistent with

how we are trying to pick up the staples and paperclips everytime. Maybe even time amount of

time we hold the nail to the pile of paperclips and staples.

Conclusion:

So overall we discovered that higher concentration(more layers) of 32 gauge copper wires

wrapped around a galvanized nail was able to pick up more mass but there is a peak(limit of

wraps until decline of mass). For our experiment we wrapped a galvanized nail in 1, 2, 4, and

eventually 5 and 10 layers. We then tested layers 1, 2, and 4 layers originally, and to ensure our

hypothesis was correct we tried 5 and 10 layers as well. We found that 1 layer had an average

of 1.74 grams, 2 layers having an average of 2.23 grams, and 4 layers an average of 2.69

grams. So with these 3 trial averages our hypothesis was correct. But we wanted to see if it was

really correct if we kept adding layers. So we tested 5 and 10 layers, 5 layers coming in with and

average of 3.36 grams and 10 layers having a average of 2.866 grams. So with this new data

we knew that there was a peak(maximum level of layers for max performance) and it is greater

than or equal to 5 and less than 10. This meant that higher concentration is beneficial to amount

of mass picker up, but to an extent. There is a max limit and that is the most efficient choice to

go with. We did not test to find the exact amount. We just tested 5 layers and a outlier number in

10 to see what happened to the amount of mass picked up. Finally, we can confidently say our

hypothesis was somewhat right with there being success with our original trials. But testing our

luck we did 2 more trials which proved it wrong, but also found that there is a specific amount of

layers between 5-9 which is most efficient in picking up mass.