Please dont laugh at this question...

[ezee]

I am still learning, and learning alot fast...so please excuse this silly question.

The picture below made me think of this.

could one use pennies in a crude stator if wire were unavailable?  I know this is way outside the box...just curious.  I would imagine that you could solder large guage wire to make the connections between the penny "coils"

How would this effect amps/voltage...I assume amps would be WAY high, or do I have that backwards?

is this do-able, or is it just completely retarded?
http://www.forcefieldmagnets.com/catalog/images/magnet30.jpg

[RP]

I'm not sure what orientation of the pennies you have in mind (edge to edge, stacked and offset, face to face, etc.)

Generally, any wide conductor will suffer from eddy currents induced across the width.  Also, any conductive joining scheme, soldering, brazing etc. will likely create more points of failure and hassle than simply using the brazing wire or solder itself as the coil wire.

[stephent]

Maybe extremely low voltage (it's just one turn), and not much amperage through the new fake (not copper) US pennies.

More then likely a lot of eddy currants floating around too.

Save the pennies and buy some wire with them, they will contribute much more to the project that way. Even stripping aluminum wire from an old metal halide ballast would work better then a flat eddy currant producing penny.

Free flights of fantasy, dreaming and thinking (and a heck of a lot of perspiration) brought us the airplane, telephone, and the internet.

Retarded? not hardly, and as the forum posting box says--no flaming or rude comments, so please don't use them on yourself.

Outside the box thinking? umm--yes--but don't stop.

[ghurd]

Your Newbie thinking is OK.

Yes. The amps would be very high because of the ultra-low resistance.

However it would only be 1 turn, so the voltage would be almost too low to measure.

Then there is that eddy current thing.  It is a killer effect to a lot of ideas.

No, it won't work, but we all understand what you are thinking, and why.

Computer monitors and TVs have a degaussing coil around the screen made of nice magnet wire.  Cheaper than pennies on garbage day?

Pennies changed from solid copper, to copper plated zinc, in mid 1982.

The `New' pennies are now 25 years old?  

G-