Fidget spinner handy generator | English

Fidget spinners are toys that have gained popularity these days as they spin for a very long time and stay balanced while spinning.
Today we will make an innovative handy electricity generator by using fidget spinner. In this simple model, we use spinning motion to create a fluctuating magnetic field which in turn generates electricity.
To design the generator, we need
1. Thin insulated copper wire
2. A fidget spinner
3. 3 Neodymium magnets
4. Cylinder caps and bottle cap
5. LED
6. Wooden board
7. Bottle cap
8. Cutters
9. Glue

The key thing about the fidget spinner is the ball bearing at the center of the toy which allows free rotation. The design of this part is very simple.

• Stick a disk neodymium magnet on one side of each arm of the fidget spinner using glue. Please make sure that the magnets are attached at the center of the circle to make it balanced.
• To make the coil, wind insulated copper wire on a cylindrical cap or PVC pipe. Wind the wire proximately 1000 times to make the coil as shown.
• Keep both ends of the wire uncoiled to serve as connection points. Tie this coil at several places to prevent it from unwinding. Wind the wires such that the windings do not open easily.
• Scrape off the insulation at the ends of two leads of the coil. Carefully check if the insulation is removed completely. Now join the LED to the coil. Your coil and LED assembly are now ready.
• Now place the fidget spinner on the bottle cap to get some height and keep the coil LED assembly underneath the magnet. Keep the gap between the magnet and the copper coil minimum.
• When you spin the magnets attached to fidget spinner above the coil then you see the LED glow.
• Once you have got one coil assembly to work, go ahead and mount the assembly on a wooden strip.
• With help of glue stick the cylindrical cap, coil assembly and the LED on the wooden strip.
• Stick the spinner on the cylindrical cap using glue. Let the complete assembly dry.
• Make sure that the magnets attached to the spinner do not touch the coil. When you spin the magnets above the coils then you can see the LED glowing. You can spin the toy in the dark to see this beautiful effect.
• The model works according to Faraday’s law which states that a changing magnetic field through a coil of wire induces an electromotive force (emf) in the coil which in turn causes current to flow. The law describing induced emf is named after the British scientist Michael Faraday.
So friends play with your fidget spinner and make it do more things than just spinning!
We hope you learned some new today from these experiments.
To learn more such Fun hands-on science and math’s activities please visit our YouTube channel “IISER Pune science activity center”.
Have fun!

Ashok Rupner, Chaitanya Mungi, Shraddha Bhurkunde, Neha Apte, Sandeep Jadhav Music: Dr. Manasi Kulkarni

This topic is covered in SSC 10th Std. Science Part 1, Chapter 4: Effects of Electric Current, Page No. 59-60 and NCRT 10th Std. Chapter 10: Magnetic Effects of Electric Current, Page No. 233-236.