How does an electric motor convert electrical energy to mechanical energy?
It’s all done with the magic of electromagnets. You know you can create a magnetic field with a coil, right? Well you stick your coil on a stick so it can spin and turn it on. Put another magnet near it, and the coil will turn to the point of greatest attraction (or away from the point of greatest repulsion, depending on how the poles are aligned). This movement is itself an example of electrical energy being converted into mechanical energy. The only problem is, the coil only moves a little way and then stops because it has reached the point of greatest atttraction (or repulsion). So what to do. Obviously you’d like it to just keep spinning around. Well, if you reverse the current in the coil, you reverse the poles of the field it’s generating. The field and the magnet now have a new point of equilibrium, and the coil moves to that. So anyway, in a motor you’ve got a coil surrounded by magnets. The coil initially turns to the next point of equilibrium, but in so doing it moves a coupl
