Lenz's Law Magnetic Braking - Aluminium Tube, Copper Tube, and 10 Super Magnets Magnetism Experiment

Exploring Lenz’s Law

Turn a Demonstration into a Hands-On Discovery Lesson.

Why just watch a cool physics demo when your students can do it themselves?

Lenz’s Law is usually shown by dropping a strong magnet down a long copper or aluminium tube — a crowd-pleaser for sure! But with our equipment, this classic demo becomes a full-blown hands-on experiment or even an engaging assessment task.

Students time how long the magnet takes to fall through each tube, then calculate the average velocity. They can experiment with magnet size, or see what happens when magnets are combined and then dropped. It’s simple, safe, and packed with learning.

• Tubes are 30 cm long (aluminium and copper)

• They have an outside diameter of 9mm and internal diameter of 6mm (wall thickness is 1.5mm)

• Large magnets: 8mm long × 4mm wide

• Small magnets: 5mm long × 3mm wide

• You can even add the plastic storage container with custom cut foam to suit the number of Lenz's Law Sets you purchase (We can make the foam fit upto 10 sets) The container is 35cm long by 26.5cm wide and 4cm thick.

Digital downloadable worksheets (both pdf and Word Doc.) guide students through turning observations into data — measuring time, calculating velocity, and graphing variables.

Use it in Year 10 for motion, or in Year 11 when diving into forces, Newton’s Laws, and SUVAT equations. Then bring it back during your electromagnetism unit for a deep dive into Lenz’s Law and magnetic braking.

Learning physics just got a whole lot more hands-on!