Wednesday 4 February 2015

Week 16

This week we have had problems at the start of the class because we were having classes in another place (an issue related with our tables needed for second of bachillerato BI exams) and our "new" classroom was closed. We had there the electromagnets, the laptops and the lab coats so we need to find a way to obtain them again.

Finally we have our materials, so we are now working and collecting data for our first experiment. We are measuring the amount of iron powder taken with an extremely precise balance. 

A new idea on how to meausure the power of the magnet has been shown; it consist on putting the magnet and the iron dust at a distance and joining them little by little in order to know the size of the field. Finally we have discarted this method as the rugossity of the table and ourselves can create great errors on the experiment.

Fixed the older method, we have discovered that the distance between the last coil and the end of the magnet influences the magnetic attraction, so we have to measure again the electromagnets which have been affected by this new variable (we are going to change it for the next week so we can maintain this as a constant). We can't use this data as this new variable has affected some of the electromagnets. Guess we will have to repeat it again, hope this time it works...