How do you demonstrate the magnetic effect of electricity?

Answer 1

Experiment I

Let a piece of glass and a piece of resin, neither of which exhibiting any electrical properties, be rubbed together and left with the rubbed surfaces in contact. They will still exhibit no electrical properties. Let them be separated. They will now attract each other.

If a second piece of glass be rubbed with a second piece of resin, and if the piece be then separated and suspended in the neighbourhood of the former pieces of glass and resin, it may be observed:

1. that the two pieces of glass repel each other.
2. that each piece of glass attracts each piece of resin.
3. that the two pieces of resin repel each other.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_charges

Answer 2

Stack two common flashlight dry cell batteries and tape them together at the middle, plus to minus, as you would normally load them into a flashlight.

Now take a length of small single stranded insulated copper door bell wire about the same diameter as a paper clip wire and about two feet long, and strip and each end about 1/2 inch.

Find a small screw driver and begin winding the wire around the shaft fairly tightly and uniformly from the handle down the shaft until just the tip of the blade is showing.

Be sure to leave about six inches of "tail" at each end of the wire, one near the handle, the other near the blade.

Now tape one tail to the bottom of the battery stack and the other to the top.

You will find that the screw driver is now magnetic, and you will be able to pick up small metal objects such as paper clips by touching the tip of the screw driver electromagnet

to them.

This same device is used in a much grander way at scrap metal salvage yards where very large pieces of metal are moved by an electromagnetic ring that is attached to a crane. The disc it attached to a cable with and is dropped into a pile of metal. Then the disc is energized, the metal sticks to it, and the crane picks up the metal and swings around to a rail car or hopper. The disc is de-energized and the metal then falls to its target point. The principle is essentially the same as your battery, wire and screwdriver.

Alternative Answer

Place a compass near the wire. When current flows, the resulting magnetic field will cause the compass needle to deflect.