Spout motor

OK, so we've got Spout's motor here. We're going to go inside of Spout's motor and take a look at what's inside it and how it works. But first, let's take a look at the outside. So we've got a piece of stamped steel. This is cold rolled steel. It's coated, or plated, in zinc to protect it from rusting. Then we've got a plastic outer housing on this side. And it has two copper contacts. The power goes in through one of the contacts and out through the other one, depending on the way the power's flowing through this circuit. And then we've got a axle here. And this is made out of steel, and it's chrome plated. On the end here, there is a brass bearing that allows the motor to spin at a good speed. So let's see if we can loosen this. There's a couple clips here on the sides you can peel back. Bent this one back a little already. There we go. So on the inside, the two tabs connect to these two pieces of metal here. And those are called brushes. These are copper brushes. And they brush up against and conduct electricity down to this guy, which is called the commutator. The commutator commutes the power from the brushes to the field windings, these guys right here. And inside of the field windings-- you can see these are solid core field-- there's a soft iron core. And the soft iron core makes the magnetic field more powerful. So it's more effective than if you just had an air core. And these things work just like your nail with the copper coil wound around it. They create an electromagnetic field. And so the power comes in, flows through the coil, is energized, and creates an electromagnet, which pushes against the magnet inside of the housing here. So there's a north pole and a south pole magnet. And so the power comes in, pushes against this magnet, rotates, and as it rotates, the field flips and pushes against the south pole magnet. And then as it rotates again, the field flips again, and it pushes against the north pole magnet. And that's why you get the rotation. And the reason why that flipping occurs is because of something called the right hand rule. The power is traveling in one direction, and so the field is moving. You take your thumb, and that's the direction of the electricity flow. And then the fingers in the direction of the field. So when the power's going in, the field's moving in one direction. When the power coming out, the field's moving in another direction. So that's why you need a north pole and a south pole to keep the motor rotating. So in any case, that's basically how the motor inside of Spout works. And in order to reverse the motor direction, all you have to do is change the positive and negative on these little connections here. So you take the positive side from the battery and connect it here, and the negative and connect it here, or switch it. And that's going to make the motor back up. And we'll see that in the details on the Spout videos.