Welcome to Garrick de Demeter's
Electric Motor Project
Website

For the last twenty-six years, Garrick de Demeter has been a teacher at Hornepayne Public School.
Hornepayne is a small community located in the pristine wilderness of northwestern Ontario, in Canada.

During the last two weeks of June, 2000, each pupil in Mr. de Demeter's grade 5/6 class built an electric motor using a design adapted from the
New UNESCO Source Book for Science Teaching.
Although published back in 1973, this excellent resource for science teachers (at both the elementary and secondary levels) is apparently still available... either directly from UNESCO or from some of the larger book retailers.

This website offers a “guided tour” of the project, complete with construction tips, organizational information, useful InterNet links, downloadable instructions properly formatted for printing, and a limited Email support option. Since it incorporates a total of twenty-two, standard-resolution “jpeg” format photographs and several “gif” images, access over the InterNet can be a bit slow. However, because its purpose is to share information freely, copyright issues are not a concern. As a result, those who wish to use this website on a frequent basis, and who also have the necessary software
(such as MicroSoft FrontPage 98),
are invited to import its entire contents (a total of less than two megabytes) to a directory on their own hard drives. They can then save a bit of time by using their browsers to access it from that location, rather than from Hornepayne's LUNet server. Those who make use of this option should, however, check the website occasionally for revisions.

While intended primarily for teachers who wish to use the electric motor project as an adjunct to science units dealing with electricity and magnetism, these twelve webpages will likely also prove useful to anyone else who is just generally interested in technological tinkering.

Including the time needed for a careful reading and discussion of the instructions, for the drawing of a labelled diagram and for the actual construction of the motor, this project requires between six and ten hours of class time. Not surprisingly, though, some students will finish working motors in only a couple of hours. Teachers and selected student helpers also need to spend a considerable amount of time preparing materials prior to the start of the work in class. It should also be noted that all the photographs in this website were staged outside of regular school hours. During actual student work in class, the teacher was far too busy giving individual assistance (and encouragement) to be taking pictures... or, for that matter, to be writing anecdotal pupil assessments.

This website is fully navigable. Using the hyperlinks in the table of contents, at the bottom of each page, visitors can navigate to any other page of the site. However, it is recommended that first-time visitors view the pages sequentially.

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