Faraday Discovers Electromagnetic Rotation

By 1831, Michael Faraday, the British scientist had been working with magnets and electric current. He found that by inducing an electric current on a wire it obtained a magnetic force that could be plotted as it changed at different point around the wire. Further experimentation showed that if you rotate the magnetized wire in a magnetic field a current is produced, a process known as electromagnetic induction. By combining the two experiments he was able to change the amount of voltage output from an electrical source. This work led to the first generators, transformers and electric motors.

A generator and an electric motor are basically the same design, but are exactly opposite in nature. A generator puts out electricity by spinning a coil of wire inside of a magnetic field while an electric motor puts electricity in causing the coil to spin. Anything can be used to spin the coil of a generator like wind, coal, gas, water, etc. Hoover Dam (below) is a way for us to harness the power of falling water, directed across a turbine connected to a generator, to provide us with a renewable, green energy source.

An electrical transformer changes the electric current by making one electromagnet larger or smaller than the opposing one. If the ratio of coil wire on one side is twice the size of the one on the other side, the electrical current is cut in half.