I Made A Solenoid Engine!

less than 1m read

·Nov 10, 2024

I built a solenoid engine. Unlike most motors out there that hide how they work, this beauty bears all. A solenoid is a kind of electromagnet. When electricity flows through this coil, a magnetic field pulls the magnet-topped piston inside up. But when the piston reaches the top, a cam on the axle it’s turning cuts off the flow of electricity, and the flywheel's momentum pulls the piston back down.

But once down, the cam disengages, electrical flow resumes, and the piston goes up again. You can see how it turns electrical energy into rotational energy. To make this happen, my team and I got to design a bunch of custom cross axle compatible parts that I had been wanting for a long time: special cams, pistons, arms, wires, a heavy brass flywheel, and of course, the solenoids themselves.

We even made elliptical gears, Nautilus gears, and a Geneva mechanism. If you’d like to build one yourself and add these parts to your arsenal—too bad, so sad, psych! You can buy one! ABS plastic, ooh, and look at those colors! The first 500 people to use code "I love you Michael" will get 10% off.

The Court in Action | AP US Government and Politics | Khan Academy

Vector form of the multivariable chain rule

View All

Obligations of citizenship | Citizenship | High school civics | Khan Academy

In this video, we’re going to learn about the obligations of U.S. citizenship. Obligations are actions that citizens are required to fulfill, or they’ll face punishment by law. Unlike the responsibilities of citizenship we talked about in the last video, …

MOLTEN GLASS VS Prince Rupert's Drop - Smarter Every Day 285

Do you know what this is? If you do, you’re going to be, like, super excited about this video. If you don’t know what this is, let me bring you up to speed. This is called a Prince Rupert’s Drop, and it’s created by dripping molten glass down into water. …

Indigenous Art in Canada | National Geographic

If you want to travel through indigenous country, experience the art. Whether it’s a painting, whether it’s a sculpture, whether it’s a song, every piece is the embodiment of a story. The art is the land, and the land is the art. This is how we share our …

Prosperity in Song China (960-1279) | World History | Khan Academy

In other videos, when we talked about the various Chinese empires, we talked about the Song Dynasty in particular as a time of significant technological innovation. Here are just some of the examples that we talk about. Most notably, gunpowder, movable bl…

Filming Fast Hummingbirds: On Location | Hostile Planet

Filming a show like “Hostile Planet” comes with a lot of unique challenges. Check out this from “Behind the Scenes.” OK, ready? One of the aims of “Hostile Planet” was to try and immerse the viewer in the world of the animals. You want to film something p…

The Launch of Perseverance to Mars

Wow, this is what it’s like to be at the launch of a spacecraft! We have this mission launching the Perseverance rover, and the helicopter Ingenuity is going up on a seven-month journey to reach Mars. This is just awesome, man! My first launch of a spacec…

I Made A Solenoid Engine!

More Articles