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So far there has been a few good answers to the pole question, the summary of it being that the armature of a motor has shapes protruding out of it that are called "poles" and the wire is wound around them. Poles have to be an odd number or the motor will vibrate but not rotate. The more poles you have, the smoother the motor will run. <br /> <br />But nobody as yet has answered your second question "why is it called a can motor" -- this has to do with the shape of the casing. Originally DC motors were square shaped open-frame things, with the top and bottom of the frame forming a bridge from the permanent magnet at the end of frame so that a magnetic field existed around the armature. This is hard to say in words - I wish I could include drawing. Anyway, the point is that a superior construction method was found where the frame and the magnet could completely surround the armature instead of being just at the top and bottom. This gave better efficiency, and it converted the old open frame motor into something that was now fully enclosed in a can. That's where the name comes from. <br /> <br />And they are called "poles" because they represent magnetic poles. The permanent magnet at the end of the frame exerts a magnetic pull on each pole in turn when current flows through it and that causes the motor to turn. For that reason poles have to be an odd number, or the north magnetic pull would balance the south magnetic pull and the motor would just vibrate.
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