Swing low sweet magniot
This week my students were doing a design lab on electromagnetism. I put some coils, metal formers, wire and magnets on the front table and told then to get on with it. It's about the 4th design lab we've done so they know the routine. I briefly introduced electromagnetic induction last week to give then some extra knowledge to work with so some thought of moving magnets and coils like in the Phet Faraday's electromagnetic lab. After some discussion they realised that they had to control the speed of the magnet. Dropping from a fixed height is the usual but a couple of groups decided to swing the magnet like a pendulum which works very well with one of those very strong Neodymium magnets. Might have a play with it next week to see if I can turn it into a DCP lab, probably end up finding g again. Also demonstrated the dangers of Neodymium magnets by pinching the skin on the end of my finger between two of them, nasty little things. Should get some really strong ones that are impossible to get apart, they'd be much safer.
