How does an electric motor work?

The first answer is a great technical answer but maybe it's still a bit of a mystery to understand what makes a motor turn. It's based on the fact that magnetic fields produce physical force that can move things. If you have ever played with magnets you have seen this in action as you use one magnet to attract another magnet or force it to move without touching it, depending on how you line up their poles. All magnets have a negative pole and positive pole. Like poles repel each other and unlike poles attract each other. So in a motor electricity is used to create magnetic fields that oppose each other and cause something to move which happens to the rotor. There is wiring loops attached to the rotating shaft that has an opposing magnetic field to a magnetic field caused by wiring in the housing of the motor that cannot move. The repelling action of the opposing magnetic fields causes the rotor to turn. If something prevents the rotor from turning than big problems can arise including a possible fire from heat buidup.

A length of wire carrying an electric current has a magnetic field which runs around the wire. If you bend that wire into a coil, you create an electromagnet, which acts just like a magnet. The field can be strenghthened many times using a suitable core for the coil, such as a piece of iron.

Now fix some ordinary magnets (or electromagents) a bit further apart than the length of electromagnet, with the north pole of one facing the south pole of the other. Place the electromagnet between them, and it will align in the same direction.

Now reverse the current and the electromagnet will try to spin to align the opposite way. Keep alternating the current and we have an electric motor. The majority of electric motors work in this way.

The electricity is conducted to the spinning electromagnet, or armature, by resting conducting "brushes" on spinning rings called "commutators". A direct current motor has one commutator split into two half-rings and two brushes. As the armature passes half way, the brushes swap to the opposite commutators, reversing the current.

Basic principle: Electric current to the motor generates changing magnetic fields inside the motor, which by various clever arrangements of magnetic attraction and repulsion causes the rotor to spin and do work.

There are several types of electric motors, I will explain the simplest type; a phase controlled AC motor. This type of motor consists of two main parts, a stator and a rotor. The rotor is group of permanent magnets suspended on an axle by bearings. The stator is several groups of coils of wire (called windings) that are mounted inside of the case that surrounds the electric motor. Each winding is an electro-magnet that is connected by wires to an electronic device called a phase controller. The electro-magnetic windings can be turned on, off, or reversed in polarity by the phase controller.

When a motor starts, the phase controller applies power to the windings so that they become magnetized with the polarity that attracts the permenant magnets on the rotor; this causes the rotor to begin rotating. As the permanent magnets on the rotor rotate past the electro-magnetic windings the phase controller reverses the polarity on the winding so that the winding repels the permanent magnets on the rotor. As the motor runs, the phase controller keeps switching windings on so that they are always attracting the permanent magnets on the rotor then repelling the permanent magnets on the rotor; this keeps it rotating. The more windings in the stator and the more permanent magnets on the rotor the smoother and more powerful the motor.

All motors work this way with some very slight variations on details.

Let me expand your question further, when you say electric motor, there are so many types of electric motors. Which type of electric motor you want to how it work? Ex: DC motors, AC motors, Bushless DC motors...etc. These all motors are electric motors but work entirely different ways. Anyway I give you some article so that you can understand them http://modernpowerelectronicsanddrivers.blogspot.com/ http://modernpowerelectronicsanddrivers.blogspot.com/2010/07/recent-developments.html http://modernpowerelectronicsanddrivers.blogspot.com/2010/07/power-converter-technology.html

There are several types of electric motors, I will explain the simplest type; a phase controlled AC motor. This type of motor consists of two main parts, a stator and a rotor. The rotor is group of permanent magnets suspended on an axle by bearings. The stator is several groups of coils of wire (called windings) that are mounted inside of the case that surrounds the electric motor. Each winding is an electro-magnet that is connected by wires to an electronic device called a phase controller. The electro-magnetic windings can be turned on, off, or reversed in polarity by the phase controller.

there is also a plasma motor which rotates at the frequency of hundreds of small plasma explosions which create a magnetic force.