When you’re a child, magnets are a bit of a magical item. To a child’s eyes, their ability to attract or repel objects seem to contradict the, up to that moment, all powerful force of gravity.
As adults, we don’t play with magnets anymore, their amusement factor having worn off. However, there is one thing about magnets that we can take advantage of: magnetic electricity.
Before I go deeper on explaining magnetic electricity, I’d like to talk about how electricity in general is produced.
There are several ways to produce energy. For example, chemical reaction, which is used by the batteries we buy to power our toys, flashlights and remote controllers. However, common household electricity is produced almost exclusively by motion. When something moves and spins, it has the potential to create electricity. In an industrial setting, turbines are the objects that spin to create electricity.
When a dam is built, water makes the turbines spin. However, more than anything, the thing that makes turbines spins is plain water vapor. A power plant boils water for this purpose. A nuclear plant doesn’t use radioactivity to generate electricity, it uses it to boil water. Any other type of material used in a power plant is burnt to boil water. The purpose in every single case is to generate motion.
Now, magnetic electricity skips all these phases and goes directly for the motion part of the equation. This is its first advantage, since it doesn’t require fuel or creates pollution through burning.
I’m sure you’ve all seen a magnet move an object without touching it. It’s the magnetic field of the magnet that causes it. The object will move towards or away from (depending on its charge) the magnet when the force of the magnetic field is stronger than all the other forces that are working on the object (specially the pulling force of gravity).
It’s with the use of several magnetic fields that motion is generated, and if the object in motion is connected to a generator, then the motion can be transformed into electricity.
The best part about it is that you can use magnetic electricity to your advantage. Unlike other types of electricity generation, magnetic electricity can be generated by a home built machine. You can find how to build one yourself with a guide that you can get on the Internet.
It’s not difficult at all, and you can have the people in your house help you. But most importantly, it will help you reduce the amount of money you pay for electricity. Depending on your energy consumption, you might even get rid of your electricity bill completely.