User:Frankcsm

''This is a research project that we did for our second english course in CEGEP. This was originally an oral presentation with some powerpoints. We are posting it on wikipedia so everybody can benefit from our research, feel free to add comments or specification to our work.''

Nowadays, people are not aware that they are using technology everyday without understanding how it works. It may have bad effects without knowing that some technology is harming us. Therefore, we have to understand technology before using it.

First of all, what is electric power?

Electric power is a flow of electrons moving from atoms to atoms. As we all know, every object is made of atoms.

Secondly, where do we use this revolutionary energy?

Electric power is used a lot in everyday life such as lighting, iPods, cell phone, refrigerator, and so on. Another simple example would be a radio controlled car; this is a great example to describe how electricity works.

We are going to inform you about how electric power can be turned into mechanical power with the help of an electric motor. We will use the knowledge we got from the first and second physics classes as a reference. As you know we are in an era in which we don't use thermal energy as much as in the fifty's. Electric power has many advantages over the old fashioned technologies.

  

To begin, a radio controlled car is mainly made with an electric main board, a motor, many mechanical pieces such as gearings and shafts, and obviously a battery tray. Now, how is the electricity working on these components? First as we all know electrons are stored in the batteries. Once the batteries are fixed in the battery tray, and the circuit is close, the electrons travel in the electrical components. Electric power is finally created. At first, the electricity passes through the main board. Basically the use of the main board is to redirect the electric power to the components that requires electricity to accomplish their multiple functions. In our radio controlled car the motor and the servo are devices that need electricity. The functions are activated by us with the help of the remote as the the electric flow to the motor is.

Here are some pics of the main components

This is a short video of how an electric motor works. The electricity coming from the batteries flows into the motor by the red wire connected to the main board and returns to the main board and to the batteries by the black wire. The motor is made of a motor case in which 2 magnets are set on both the right and left inside sides of the motor case and an armature which is a shaft with a lot of wire wounds around it, the quantity and size of wire determine if the motor will create wether more torque and a greater acceleration (small wire and a lot of turns) or more power and a higher top speed (fat wire and less turns). The current flows through the armature by the help of the two brushes which are connected to the wires to get fed with current. When the current flows through the armature, this one becomes a temporary magnet with a south and a north side as long as the current flows through it then the armature is attracted by the magnets on the side of the motor case. If the brushes weren't there, the armature would only do half of a turn in order to get the south and north side of the armature aligned to the south and north magnets of the motor case.

This video posted on youtube and produced by Yves Pelletier explains how the motor keeps turning and does not only do half of a turn because of the polarity of the magnets and of the armature. The current flowing direction changes every half turn thus the polarity of both the north and south side of the armature are swapped and the armature continues to spin freely and procude kinetic energy.



Unfortunately, we can’t explain how the remote works. But we have an idea of the mechanism; by activating a button or a lever we send waves and frequencies from the remote to the car’s antenna. Because this is the content of the third physics class and we can’t elaborate much more on this subject.