Electronic – Homemade electromagnet parts

electromagnetism

I'm trying to build a homemade electromagnet to show my son. I took speaker wire and wrapped it around a stick maybe about 40 times. Then I used a C cell battery to power it, however I saw no magnetic effect when I exposed it to some screws.

Questions:

  • Is a C cell battery not enough power for this?
  • Is speaker wire okay for this kind of application, or should I use magnet wire?
  • Should I get longer wire to have more coils?

Thanks for any suggestions.

mj

Best Answer

One thing you could do is up your voltage, C batteries only give around 1.5, same as AA, so if you put multiple AAs in a series you can max your voltage as their resistance(0.12) is a bit lower than Cs