Magnets Produce Electricity

Magnetic fields produced by magnets can move the free electrons for some metals like copper. When these free electrons move from their level in the atom, electrical current flow will be produced.

How can magnets produce electricity?

Electricity and magnetism are strongly linked to each other as electricity can generate magnetic fields and magnetic fields can generate electricity, when electricity is changed with respect to time, a magnetic field will produced and when magnetic field is changed with respect to time, electricity will be produced. This is called electromagnetism.

Electricity is generated at power plants which use huge turbine generators, these turbines use various types of fuels to move, they can use oil, natural gas or coal to generate steam flow power. Turbines can use uranium atoms split to heat water converting it also to steam which rotate them or they can get kinetic energy from water fall at dam or from wind.

What happened inside the generator to produce electricity?

The turbine is connected to a shaft in the generator and inside the generator; a magnets and coils of copper wires are present. In some designs the turbine move the magnets inside the coil and in another design the turbine moves the coil inside the magnets, in two cases the result is a varying magnetic field with a time that cut the copper wires and hence the free electrons in the copper conductors will move from one atom to another and electrical current will flow in the load connected to the generator.

In most cases the turbine shaft moves the copper wires inside the two big magnets as the first magnet has north pole to the front on one side and the second magnet on the other side has south pole to the front, the magnetic fields between these magnets pull and push the electrons in the copper conductors making them flow, these moving electrons are the electricity that flow into the loads connected to the generator.