At around the end of the fidget spinner craze I thought "but what would it take to make it spin by its own?" And it turned out, not much. Just put one magnet at each of the three ends, and have some pulsating magnet near it (next to it, or under it hidden in some kind of base), and there! you have a basic electric motor that seems entirely magical.
It was a really fun experiment; I even toyed with doing a small production run but by the time I was almost ready the craze had passed.
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Excellent!
At around the end of the fidget spinner craze I thought "but what would it take to make it spin by its own?" And it turned out, not much. Just put one magnet at each of the three ends, and have some pulsating magnet near it (next to it, or under it hidden in some kind of base), and there! you have a basic electric motor that seems entirely magical.
It was a really fun experiment; I even toyed with doing a small production run but by the time I was almost ready the craze had passed.
Related, here's a globe that uses the earths magnetic field (an a little solar panel within) to spin "forever"!
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-NII1RdlcQ
It's been done. https://youtu.be/oAxQQyURMPQ