Building with motors?

Question

i need to do a school assignment and i have to build something with a motor. it doesnt have to be too impressive just something different that i can build with a small motor

Answer 1

The purpose of any school assignment is to get the student to use their own initiative, imagination, and resourcefulness in order to help them develop skills in a multitude of areas. Use your own imagination, think about the various things in and around your environment that need to be done and see if any of these can be achieved using motorised power. When you have decided which this will be, think about how the motor can be used to do this task. Basically a motor is a source of energy and it is used to transfer or transpose that form of energy into other forms of energy. A steam engine transposes steam energy into mechanical energy to turn the wheels of a steam train. Similarly a steam engine in a ship transposes steam energy into mechanical energy to turn the propeller of the ship. The propeller transfers its rotating energy to pushing the water away and behind the ship giving the ship thrust to move forward. So we have steam energy finally being transfered into the potential energy which is in the moving steamship. Remember Albert Einstein observed that energy can be neither created nor destroyed, it is merely transformed from one type to another type. So with your motor ( electric I suppose and battery powered) - how do you intend transforming its energy? Will it be used to create linear motion to some object, or will it be used to create light, generate heat, lift or rotate something?

Answer 2

You could go for many things. Common uses for motors is to rotate something like a car or bike etc. You could build something to that effect.

Also a motor can drive a pump and you could try and build your own. You can connect a wheel on the motor and have a rod on a pin connected to the wheel. Then the rod can drive a plunger in a tube that draws in fluid from one point and pump it out the other. The problem is then to make a non return valve. You need a non return valve on the suction end and the delivery end. Normally it is a housing that has a spring and a ball that only lets water flow in one way by pushing the spring out of the way and then the ball will push on the seal when you try to push it the other way.

You could also have a board that has a few pins and gears connected on it so that the motor drives one gear to drive another etc. Then you can fit round paper discs on the other side with spirals on. The different gears will make the spirals turn in different directions and speed. Hypnotic and cool. You can get gears in toy shops and hobby shop and some electronic hobby shops sell them.