Hi, I’m Emily and I’m an engineer for ComEd. 
My engineering team supports the communication of ComEd’s distribution system devices, including communication to renewable energy resources. 
Today, we’re going to take a closer look at electricity and how we’re able to actually generate or create it. 
Electricity is a little different from the other sources of energy that we talk about. 
Unlike natural gas, wind, or solar energy, electricity is a secondary source of energy. 
That means we must use other primary sources of energy, such as coal or wind, to make electricity.
We use electricity to light our homes, schools, and businesses. 
Electricity runs our TVs, computers, and video games. 
It cooks our food and washes our dishes. 
It mows our lawns and blows the leaves away. 
 It can even run our cars.
What exactly is the mysterious force we call electricity? 
It is simply moving electrons. 
Electrons are the tiny, charged particles found moving around the outside the nucleus of an atom. 
Electrons don’t just move around the nucleus of an atom; they also spin. 
When they spin, they can create a magnetic field.  
A scientist named Michael Faraday was the first to show us this!  
Electricity can make a magnet. 
BUT we can also use this same principle in the opposite way by using a magnet to make electricity.  
ComEd distributes power to its customers from a power plant. 
Power plants use this same principle to generate electricity. 
Power plants use many fuels or energy sources to spin turbines.
 They can burn natural gas, coal, or garbage to make steam to spin turbines. 
Or they can split uranium atoms to heat water into steam. 
They can also use the power of rushing water from a dam or the energy in the wind to spin the turbine.
 The turbine is attached to a shaft in the generator. 
Inside the generator are magnets and coils of copper wire. 
The magnets and coils can be designed in two ways—the turbine can spin the magnets inside the coils or can spin coils inside the magnets. 
Either way, the electrons are pushed from one copper atom to another by the moving magnetic field.
Coils of copper wire are attached to the turbine shaft.
 The shaft spins the coils of wire inside two huge magnets. 
The magnet on one side has its north pole to the front. 
The magnet on the other side has its south pole to the front. 
The magnetic fields around these magnets push and pull the electrons in the copper wire as the wire spins. 
The electrons in the coil flow into transmission lines. 
These moving electrons are the electricity that flows to our houses. 
Electricity moves through the wire very quickly. 
Today, we’re going to make our own electromagnet to begin to show the same principle that helps a big powerplant generate electricity. 
Let’s make an electromagnet.  
Our model is going to use electricity to create a magnetic field. 
Remember electromagnetism can work the other way around, too. 
We’re going to use a nail – a metal that’s not yet a magnetized – and see if we can use electricity to turn it into a magnet. 
First, we’ll check the nail for any magnetism by putting it near our compass. 
The compass needle is a magnet, if there’s a magnet near it, that needle will move.
 Since our needle doesn’t move, we’re good to go! 
Next, we’ll connect one end of our wire to the negative end of our battery to begin creating our circuit for electricity to flow. 
Then, we’ll wrap the wire around the nail starting from the flat end and moving our coil towards the pointy end, but making sure we have enough wire remaining to connect to the battery.  
Finally, we’ll connect our loose end to the positive terminal of the 9-volt battery.
From here, we’re going to move the compass back near to the nail’s pointy end.
Let’s see what happens when we move the flat end of the nail near the compass. 

Here’s a close up. 
Now it’s your turn. 
Try out the experiment at home. 
Can you explain what we see happening in the compass?  
Do you have some paper clips? 
If so, bring some paper clips near the nail. 
How many can you lift, and why are you able to lift them? 
Don’t forget to take a video clip of what your electromagnet does near the compass. 
Submit a video to STEMNeverStops@comed.com that shares your clip, and explains what electricity is, and where it’s coming from in your experiment.
 Also, be sure to explain or show us how you know you created a magnet, and how electricity and magnetism are related. 
Finally, be careful. 
Over time your circuit of the battery, wire, and nail can become quite hot. 
Be sure to disassemble the set-up so your battery isn’t completely drained. 
It will remain warm for a little while, so use caution! 
 If you wish to repeat the experiment from scratch, drop your nail on the hard ground a few times!