• Question: What is the difficultest type of electric motors to understand and what makes it so complicated?

    Asked by dynamitefire to John on 23 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: John Welford

      John Welford answered on 23 Jun 2012:

      Lots of people find motors difficult to understand because they rely on magnetism, which is mysterious and invisible! I find induction motors hard to understand as they don’t contain any permanent magnets. Electric current flowing in coils makes an electromagnet on the stationary part but it also ‘induces’ a electromagnet on the rotating part.
      Other types of motor have a permanent magnet on either the stationary or rotating part, which I think makes them easier to think about.
      Induction motors are used in all sorts of things though, they are a really common type of motor.

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