Flux switching alternator

Do you know what an alternator is? It's a thing on a car (or a generator) that makes electricity. But do you know how it works?

A regular alternator makes electricity by having a spinning part (called a rotor) with magnets in it. Around the rotor, there are coils of wire (called stator). As the rotor spins, it creates a magnetic field that moves past the coils of wire. This movement makes electricity in the wire.

Now, a flux switching alternator works differently. Instead of magnets on the rotor, it has pieces of metal (called poles). The poles have little magnets inside them, and they're spaced out in a circle around the rotor.

But instead of the stator being just coils of wire, it has something called a core. The core is made of many layers of metal, and it has pieces of wire sticking out of it in different places.

As the rotor spins, the poles move past the core. But instead of just making electricity in the coils of wire, something different happens. The magnets inside the poles switch on and off, and this makes the magnetic field move around inside the core.

The moving magnetic field makes the pieces of wire in the core produce little electric currents. These currents aren't very strong, but they do something special. They make the moving magnetic field shift around again, and this time it's stronger.

So the little currents in the core help make a bigger and stronger magnetic field. And that bigger field makes even more little currents in the core. This keeps happening over and over, and it makes lots and lots of electricity!

So that's how a flux switching alternator works – by making lots of little currents in a core that build up to make a big electric current.