The purpose of our experiment is to examine ways in which to build a better burglar alarm. When we checked the background of homemade burglar alarms, we found one example that included an electromagnet. When making a burglar alarm, you would most likely want one that works well, so we conducted our experiment to find the best core available at your local hardware store while keeping your costs down and limiting the amount of material wasted. We will be using Zinc-Steel bolts and Galvanized-Steel bolts with diameters of 1/4’’, 5/16’’, 3/8’’ and 1/2’’ and a length of three inches as the core of our electromagnets and testing the strength of their magnetic fields by examining the number of staples it can pick up.