What if you could see the magnetic field?

Here's a cheeky little video anyone who works with electric motors may enjoy.

It's a visualisation of a rotating magnetic field generated in an AC electric motor stator.

The idea came to me in preparation for my 'Introduction to Electric Motors Course' that I offer free-of-charge to my customers apprentices.

The course starts off with an introduction to electromagnetism, then as the day progresses I've got coils wound and describe how three phase works and a rotating magnetic field is generated. The only problem with that is that I'm talking about it, not showing it.

Then an idea popped into mind...Why not use magnetic paper and see if I can see the magnetic field rotating?

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Hopefully you can see the colour on the paper change, it's more evident around the end of the laminations but you can certainly see the pattern rotate. I've used a 4 pole stator here and slowed frequency down to 1Hz so it can be seen clearly.

This'll be great to show the difference in the magnetic cycles between different pole stators too.

Not a bad demonstration eh?