To imagine what it is like to make a magnet by using electricity, first think of a wire with an electric current running through it. Let’s say the wire is 12 cm long and is connected to a battery to supply the electrical current to the wire. The magnetic field would look something like diagram 1 (right).

Now suppose that you want to make a stronger magnetic field. One way that scientists have found to do this is to coil the wire. Imagine taking 36 cm of wire and coiling it around and around until the length of the coil is 12 cm as shown in diagram 2 (right). When you coil a wire, you can get more wire into a smaller amount of space. Since there is more wire, there is more electrical current in the same amount of space, and there is a stronger magnetic field!