HELP

[Sandy Shutey]

We have started Activity 6 and having a tough time understanding the building a motor/generator toy.   Many of the materials shown in the picture are not in the box and some in the picture have nothing to do with the buildingof the machine.   The drawing needs to be updated to make sense as to what exactly to do.  Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

[Matt Anthes-Washburn]

I had the same problem. I wasn't able to track down some of the materials, like the dowel (These things take more planning for me now that I don't have a car.) Arthur suggested challenging students to take the design home and tinker with it. This is definitely a precision design, but I think students get how it should work, since they had success with the simpler motor with just the coil suspended between two paper clips. I considered it more of a suggestion for one way to try the challenge.

[Sandy Shutey]

The kids played with it for 4 days and yesterday they did it.  I suggested they use paper clips to hang the "dowel" from and they got it to work.  We had to use a larger power supply than the hand generators.  They put their design in the paper stuff being sent to George.   The hand generator never worked but the larger power supply did.   It takes to long to make the stuff to work on this.  The idea would be for me to have the students work as groups at home on this as maybe a test or extra credit but 4 days is too long in the construction part.
Challenging and fun for those students really interested but for the others it was boring and not constructive.

[Jeff Briggs]

  We had the same problems in my class.  We got around them by making aluminum clips from sheet aluminium and tin snips - Watch the sharp edges on the clips!  I agree that you have to use a bigger generator than the hand-held - the one supplied with the kits works well (but that might have come from chapter 7 materials) and I have built in supplies at each lab station.  It is a tough activity that challenges their creativity and like Matt most of my groups did use the same setup as their 'kit' for the chapter challenge.

  I had better luck by changing the design for the motor.  I'll bring a demo model up to Boston this summer and explain how to construct them.  The students had more success with this design - all groups constructed a working armature - and they seemed more engaged by the modified activity.  Perhaps we could substitute this design in the activity if there's time for a reprint.

[Eisenkraft]

Jeff,

We will be very excited to see your stuff this summer.  We'll also be excited to see you and the others that are planning on coming.

Arthur