According to Faraday’s law, does a magnet need to accelerate to cause an induced voltage or can the magnet be stationary? I’m trying to design an experiment around Faraday’s law for an assignment in school. I want to do something similar to what is in this video https://youtu.be/vwIdZjjd8fo. I wanted to only change the loops in the wire to see if induced voltage was proportional to the number of loops in the wire. I want to keep velocity constant in the trials. Will a voltage still be induced at a constant velocity or do I have to accelerate the magnet?
 A: Let's recall that the induced current due to the motion of a magnet is proportional to the rate of change of the magnetic flux. Meaning that a magnet moving, at a constant velocity, will induce a voltage in the coil. Additionally, the higher the velocity, the higher the absolute value of voltage induced.
It's important to note that the energy deposited into the circuit is directly subtracted from the kinetic energy of the magnet. That's why, when you drop a magnet through a coil, the magnet takes longer to hit the ground than if you were to drop it in the absence of a coil.
The question you asked in the title is also slightly different from what you had asked in the question body. Typically, a stationary magnet cannot induce a voltage in a coil since there is no change in the magnetic flux over time. This is based on the assumption that you can't somehow manipulate the orientation of the magnetic field of the magnet itself without moving it mechanically.
A: The induced emf is proportional to the rate of change of magnetic flux which in turn will be related to the speed of the magnet.
If the speed is increasing and all other things are equal then the emf will increase.
I’m trying to design an experiment around Faraday’s law for an assignment in school. I want to do something similar to what is in this video . . . . . . which consists of a magnet being moved into a coil, with a variable number of tuns, connected to a moving coil ammeter.
This is a often used demonstration of Faraday's law which illustrates the idea but can be improved.
The first thing to note from the video is that the coils which are being used have differing resistances because the lengths of the wires are not the same.
So better to have a long piece of wire and altering the number of turns with the rest of the wire which is not part of the coil being connecting leads.
Next there is a problem with the damping in the circuit which can often be illustrated by adding resistance in the coil and ammeter circuit and noting that the deflection shown on the ammeter is larger!
The ammeter coil is designed to be critically damped so that the pointer reaches a reading without overshoot and in the shortest time possible.
With a small resistance coil across the terminals the damping is increased and so when the emf is generated over a short period of time the coil (and pointer) are more sluggish in its response resulting in a smaller reading.
Another problem is that keeping "all other things are equal" requires you to move the magnet at the same speed for each part of the experiment.
A possible way out of this is to have the coil in a horizontal plane and connect to either a data logger of a cathode ray oscilloscope and dropping the magnet from the same position relative to the coil every time and noting the maximum and minimum readings.
With this arrangement the damping of the ammeter is avoided and it is possible to take readings which show a proportionality between induced voltage and number of turns.
With the coil and the magnets you will probably be using the effect of the induced voltage producing an induced current which retards the passage of the magnet will probably be very small as the induced current will be very small due to the input resistance of the data logger or the CRO being very high.
