Parallel or Series Magnetic Coils?

Yes it does make a difference. The current and power will be less if the coils are connected in series.

Ace has answered your questions so could you answer one of mine?

What are you thinking of doing? We can give you simple answers to simple questions but we might be giving either wrong or inadequate answers just because we needed to know some important piece of info.

If your coils are DC, the polarity or direction of turns might have some bearing on performance whether or not they are in series or in parallel. It depends on what you want to achieve.

I want to make a ring out of 8 coils, powered with dc, for letting electrons rotating in a circle. I try to concentrate them to let a reaction happen.

I take it back. For what you are doing it does not make any difference how you hook them up. See, you already got a reaction from me.

You're not trying to build a Tokamak reactor at home, are you? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokamak

Television tubes shoot out a stream of electrons, and where they impinge on the front of the screen is controlled by magnetic coils, called the "deflection coil."

You will need a source of electrons to inject into a toroid, but all you're gonna get is a bunch of electrons running around inside a toroid. Oh, and it should be held in a high vacuum.

Good luck . . .

Ah! 'Sounds like one of those, "What happens when I do this" type of projects.

I have no idea what will happen. Maybe nothing or maybe something. If you indeed succeed in getting electrons to whirl around the ring, I couldn't imagine what use there would be in achieving it. Then again, discovery may lie in the observation. Who knows?

I would think, however, that you'd need big coils and lots and lots of current to be able to get anything out of this. An MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is essentially a great big coil and produces very powerful magnetic fields. People entering it are warned to remove all metallic objects because they will be converted to dangerous flying projectiles as they are attracted to the coil. As powerful as the magnetic field is, no effect from the mass of electrons flying around has been recorded or observed.

Inductance adds like resistance when put in series. However, we are assuming that these coils are not close enough that there is mutual inductance to worry about.

Assuming the coils to be similar: it just changes the input supply that you will need for the a given effect. Two in parallel requires half the Voltage and twice the current of two in parallel. My personal view is that if you don't have this basic level of knowledge/understanding, you run the risk of making a coil that will overheat and explode, and you had best get someone sufficiently knowledgeable to check you are not going to kill yourself before you turn on.

Magnetic Field = I[Squared] x T [Number of turns], so if you halve the voltage applied to a coil its current halved so [1/2 x 1/2 = 1/4]

PARDON! I*T surely?