Build Your Own Speaker with Magnets
Magnets make music possible. How?
Magnets are an important component of speakers and headphones, as they convert electrical energy into sound energy. Magnets transmit the sound energy through the “cone” of the speaker. This description isn’t as complex as actual sound design, but it gives you a brief idea of how magnets play a role in sound transmission.
Using copper wire and strong neodymium magnets, you’re able to recreate the basic technology behind speakers! The wire will transmit electrical current, making the magnets vibrate, which we will pick up as sound. To amplify this sound, we’ll incorporate a cup into the simple design, leaving you with a quick and easy magnet experiment:
What You’ll Need -
- Paper cup
- (5) 10mm x 2mm disc
- Copper wire
- Hot glue gun & glue
- Auxiliary cord
- Cardboard tube
- First, you’ll wrap copper wire around the cardboard tube multiple times to create a coil. Start from the middle of the wire, and leave excess wire hanging off both sides of the magnet.
- Glue the disc magnets to the bottom of the paper cup.
- Glue the coil to the bottom of the cup so it is placed around the disc magnets.
- Finally, find an auxiliary cord that plugs into your radio, iPod, phone, or whatever source of music you’re using. Plug one end into the music source. On the other end, wrap one piece of the excess copper wire around the top and the other piece around the bottom. To make this step easier, you can purchase gator clips and attach the wire to the plug end that way.
- Test away! You can adjust the magnet strength to amplify the volume. Stronger disc magnets tend to work better than magnets with less power.