Physics Home > Teaching Labs > Electricity & Magnetism > Magnetic Balance

Topics

Points of Emphasis

Prerequisites

Lab Activities

Student activities include:

a. demonstration of the validity of Coulomb's law for magnets by measuring the force between two magnetic poles for a variety of pole separations and then plotting F vs 1/d^2;

b. using data taken in the first part and Coulomb's law for magnetic poles, computation of the magnetic pole strengths and confirmation of the values obtained by measurement of the pole strengths using a pair of Helmholtz coils; and

c. determination of the shape of the magnetic fields for a variety of magnetic pole configurations; this data can be used to compute a a rough value for the horizontal component of the earth's magnetic field for this area.

Course Level

Intermediate

Student Handouts

Equipment

Number of set-ups available: 1 Per lab station: 1 magnetic balance apparatus 1 HP 6282A DC power supply 1 multimeter 1 set of Helmholtz coils

Notes

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Site contact: largent@Dartmouth.EDU

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