Physics
Benjamin Franklin's Kite Experiment
Benjamin Franklin's kite experiment was a pivotal demonstration of the connection between lightning and electricity. In 1752, Franklin flew a kite during a thunderstorm, attaching a metal key to the string. When lightning struck the kite, the key conducted electricity, proving that lightning is a form of electricity. This experiment laid the foundation for understanding the nature of electricity and lightning.
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eBook - ePub- Philip Loubere(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
N S Magnets Coil BrushCommutatorElectric circuit104 I NDUSTRIAL AND MODERN AGESThere is some dispute as to whether Ben Franklin ’s iconic 1752 kiteexperiment ever actually took place.The only record of it was written by an acquaintance, English chemist JosephPriestley, 15 years aer the supposedevent. But another experiment inspiredby Franklin did take place in May 1752in Marly-la-Vi lle, France, a month earlierthan Franklin’s supposed kite flight. Thomas-Francois Dalibard erected a tall metal pole sitting on top of some wine bottles and waited for lightning to strikeit, which eventually happened, resulting inobservable electric sparks.This was the first observable evidencethat lightning was electricity , confirmingFranklin’s hypothesis. Shortly aerDalibard’s report the experiment wasreproduced by a number of otherresearchers in Europe. Franklin’ssubsequent invention of lightningrods, based on this discovery , could beconsidered the first practical application in the control of electric currents. A number of electricity terms whichwe now use are derived from the namesof researchers of the late 1700s and early 1800s: Luigi Galvani ,Charles-August inde Coulomb ,Alessandro V olta, Andre- Marie Ampere , Georg Ohm , Michael Faraday , James Prescott Joule . They all contributed to methods of measuring and controlling the flow of electricity in a conductive material, and thanks to their work the nature of electricity was better understood, but its practical application was still lacking.Practical applic ationsIn 1800Alessandro V olta, for whom volts are named, demonstrated thatelectricity could be generated chemicallywhen he created the first electric pile, the precursor of modern batteries. The pile
eBook - ePubThe Big Ideas in Physics and How to Teach Them
Teaching Physics 11–18
- Ben Rogers(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
Franklin enjoyed the Leyden jar enormously. He invented a game called “treason,” which involved an electrified portrait of the king with a removable gilt crown. Anyone who tried to remove the crown while holding the gilt edge of the picture would be shocked.His electrical fun nearly ruined one Christmas when he used Leyden jars to kill the turkey for the entertainment of his friends:I have lately made an experiment in electricity that I desire never to repeat. Two nights ago, being about to kill a turkey by the shock from two large glass jars, containing as much electrical fire as forty common phials, I inadvertently took the whole through my own arms and body, by receiving the fire from the united top wires with one hand, while the other held a chain connected with the outsides of both jars.(Franklin 1840: 255)This lesson might have stopped other philosophers from persisting with such dangerous experiments, but not Benjamin Franklin. In 1752, he carried out the most famous of dangerous experiments: flying a kite in a thunderstorm. He connected the kite string to a Leyden jar to investigate whether the lightning could be stored as electricity. It worked. It is astonishing that Franklin survived long enough to die in his own bed, aged 84.The Leyden jar did not have any more great secrets to reveal. It took another four decades for the philosophy of electricity to make a significant leap forwards. This time with frogs’ legs and animal electricity.Museum of electrical historyTo create your own mini-Leyden jar, as shown in Figure 1.7: Warning:
eBook - ePubA Degree in a Book: Electrical And Mechanical Engineering
Everything You Need to Know to Master the Subject - in One Book!
- David Baker(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Arcturus(Publisher)
Leyden jar , a device for storing electrical energy. It consisted of a glass bottle half-filled with water, with foil attached to the inside and outside surfaces and a metal terminal projecting through the lid stopper to make contact with the water. As a demonstration of conduction, the Leyden jar was the first capacitor, and is still used today to educate students in the principles of electrostatics.Well known as one of the first to make direct measurements of electrical energy by the use of a Leyden jar, Benjamin Franklin is remembered for his daring experiments with lightning.Names to Know: electrical revolutionaries
James Wimshurst (1832–1903)Thomas Edison (1847–1931)John Ambrose Fleming (1849–1945)Oliver Heaviside (1850–1925)Nikola Tesla (1856–1943)Rudolf Hertz (1857–94)Guglielmo Marconi (1874–1937)Christian Hülsmeyer (1881–1957)Significant progress leading to the current understanding of electricity took hold during the 19th century. It began in 1827 with research by the German scientist Georg Ohm (1789–1854), who would give his name to the difference between the potential (voltage) across the conductor and the resulting electric current – Ohm’s law . In 1831, Michael Faraday (1791–1867) discovered what today we know as electromagnetic induction . By demonstrating electromotive force across a conductor in a varying magnetic field, Faraday was jumping ahead of his day.The 19th century would see the definition of different forces, with electricity and magnetism regarded as separate until in 1873 James Clerk Maxwell (1831–79) convinced scientists to think of the combined force of electromagnetism as fields defined by his mathematical equations. Just five years later, James Wimshurst (1832–1903) began working on a machine for developing high voltages and this would carry his name. Consisting of two Leyden jars and two contra-rotating glass discs with metal strips, it comprised two metal bars and metallic brushes with a spark gap between two metal balls.
eBook - ePubScientific Practices in European History, 1200-1800
A Book of Texts
- Peter Dear(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
17 ELECTRICITY: BALANCING THE BOOKSBenjamin Franklin’s work on electricity was epochal. He invented the concepts of positive and negative electricity, and the associated idea of electrical charge, and he did this in connection with exemplary experiments. The idea of electrical charges and their equilibration in discharge set the stage for Franklin’s later identification, in the 1750s, of lightning with electrical discharge of just the sort seen in experimental set-ups. This balancing of the electrical books played a central role in his grand theorising about electricity, the atmosphere, and the earth as part of a system governing global meteorological phenomena.Source: Benjamin Franklin, letter to Peter Collinson about Philadelphia experiments. From Collinson’s Experiments and Observations on Electricity (1751), Letter II (July 11, 1747), pp. 13–16.We had for some time been of opinion, that the electrical fire was not created by friction, but collected, being really an element diffus’d among, and attracted by other matter, particularly by water and metals. We had even discovered and demonstrated its afflux to the electrical sphere, as well as its efflux, by means of little light windmill wheels made of stiff paper vanes, fixed obliquely and turning freely on fine wire axes. Also by little wheels of the same matter, but formed like water wheels. Of the disposition and application of which wheels, and the various phænomena resulting, I could, if I had time, fill you a sheet. The impossibility of electrising one’s self (tho’ standing on wax) by rubbing the tube and drawing the fire from it; and the manner of doing it by passing the tube near a person or thing standing on the floor, &c. had also occurred to us some months before Mr Watson’s ingenious Sequel 1
eBook - ePub- Benjamin Franklin(Author)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Diamond Books(Publisher)
The society, on this, resum’d the consideration of the letters that had been read to them; and the celebrated Dr. Watson drew up a summary account of them, and of all I had afterwards sent to England on the subject, which he accompanied with some praise of the writer. This summary was then printed in their Transactions; and some members of the society in London, particularly the very ingenious Mr. Canton, having verified the experiment of procuring lightning from the clouds by a pointed rod, and acquainting them with the success, they soon made me more than amends for the slight with which they had before treated me. Without my having made any application for that honour, they chose me a member, and voted that I should be excus’d the customary payments, which would have amounted to twenty-five guineas; and ever since have given me their Transactions gratis. They also presented me with the gold medal of Sir Godfrey Copley 110 for the year 1753, the delivery of which was accompanied by a very handsome speech of the president, Lord Macclesfield, wherein I was highly honoured. 106 The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge was founded in 1660 and holds the foremost place among English societies for the advancement of science. 107 See Appendix. 108 A celebrated French naturalist (1707-1788). 109 Dalibard, who had translated Franklin’s letters to Collinson into French, was the first to demonstrate, in a practical application of Franklin’s experiment, that lightning and electricity are the same. This was May 10th, 1752, one month before Franklin flew his famous kite at Philadelphia and proved the fact himself.”—McMaster. 110 An English baronet (died in 1709), donator of a fund of £100, “in trust for the Royal Society of London for improving natural knowledge.”
