Nico hadiaris

March 13, 2018

Physics and engineering

electromagnet experiment

objective/Purpose: Following the overall question of how do electrical currents influence

magnetic fields we investigated how thickness of copper wire influences strength of a the
electromagnet.

Background: A electromagnet is a wire wrapped around a core like iron, nickel, or cobalt,
because those materials behave like mini magnets, with current running through the wire.
Electric current creates a weak magnetic field on its own but when that is wrapped in a coil
creates a stronger magnetic field shown below.

Hypothesis: If 32, 17 and 14 gauge wire are wrapped around a 3 inch galvanised 48 times
overlapping then all electromagnets will pick up the same amount of paper clips.

Procedure:
1. Choose 32 gauge wire and cut to 137 cm
2. Wrap the wire around a 3in steel nail 48 times, overlapping, 25 on the bottom 23 on top
3. Strip the ends on the wire and connect to 1.5v battery and hold
4. Test magnet by holding above open packet of #1 paper clips.
5. Count number of paper clips that stayed on for more than 3 seconds picked up by the
magnet
6. Repeat 3 times for 3 trials
7. Repeat with 17 and 14 gauge wire
Data:
14 gauge 17 gauge 32 gauge
 Trial 1 10 paper clips 4 paper clips 1 paper clips

Trial 2 14 paper clips 4 paper clips 2 paper clips

Trial 3 17 paper clips 12 paper clips 3 paper clips

Average (rounded to 14 paper clips 7 paper clips 2 paper clips

nearest whole
number)

Analysis/discussion:
Our data shows that the thicker the wire the stronger the electromagnet. 14 gauge wire
outperformed better than 17 and 32 gauge wire, but I believe the 17 gauge wire had some
inconsistencies, 4 paper clips seem out of line with the 12 in the third trial, I would choose the
average for all wires to get rid of any inconsistencies.
CLEAR paragraph:

In our experiment we chose to test if the thickness of wire changed the strength of an
electromagnet. Our claim is that the thicker the wire the stronger the electromagnet. We tested
the electromagnets by wrapping 14 , 17 and 32 gauge wire around a nail 48 times then testing it
by see how many paper clips it could pick up. Our 14 gauge wire pick up an average of 14
paper clips while the 17 gauge wire picked up an average of 7 paper clips and our 32 gauge
wire picked up only 2 paper clips. Our 14 gauge wire picked up 700% more paper clips than our
32 gauge wire. This is because a thicker wire lets more current run through it increasing the
strength of the magnetic field the electricity produces. The thinker wire lets more