The electric current produced by the thunder lightning can be around 30,000 amperes, which is highly dangerous and destructive. In the kite experiment, the electric charge collected was from the clouds, no visible lightning had struck the kite. This later led to the development of Lightning rods, which could protect a structure from being hit with lightning. This brought him to the conclusion that lightning is made from electrical discharge. It all changed once he realized that there is another way to get closer to clouds - by using a kite. The loose threads of the hemp string were observed to stand upright and repel each other, thus giving proof that this was Electricity and Leyden jar was charging. When the kite was flown, Franklin observed that the hemp string had soaked in the water and was conductive of electricity. In 1752, he conducted his famous kite experiment and demonstrated that lightning is electricity. The other string was with Franklin, and a house key (metal) was attached to its end which was in turn connected to a Leyden jar.Ī Leyden jar is a device, which can store high voltage electrical charge, it contains two metal terminals separated by a distance inside a closed hollow glass bottle, it can be thought of as an earlier form of capacitor. Benjamin Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1726, and two years later opened a printing shop. The kite was flown in a thunderstorm, and the silk string was kept dry by letting his son fly it from inside a shelter. It was the first attempt to show that the lightning which occurs in thunderstorms is electricity.įor this experiment, he used a kite with two strings attached to it- a dry silk string and a conductive hemp string. His discoveries in this field led to further research into the nature of electricity, influencing the invention of batteries by Volta, and the electric motor by Faraday in the early nineteenth century.This experiment was conducted by Benjamin Franklin in 1752, also known as the kite experiment. Two of his friends got electrocuted while they. Choose one of these quotes, and explain what you think it means in the space below. He was also the first scientist to use the terms positive and negative charge, possibly the basis of the myth that he discovered electricity. The story is that he and three of his friends were trying to analyze static electricity and experiment with it. His curiosity lead him to constantly hypothesize, experiment, and draw new. He attached a silk ribbon to the string and brought along a metal house key and a Leyden jar. Whilst this seems like a stupid method, the evidence showed that he actually intended for the electricity to jump into a primitive form of capacitor known as a Leyden jar, and that touching the key was purely accidental.Īfter the experiments with lightning conductors, it would appear that he knew enough about grounding to insulate himself from serious harm. He built a kite out of silk mounted on a string of hemp. The kite was struck by lightning and, when Franklin moved his hand towards the key, a spark jumped across and he felt a shock, proving that lightning was electrical in nature. A key was then attached near the bottom, to conduct the electricity and create a charge. Franklins investigation would eventually lead to his notorious kite experiment, in which he theorized that lightning was simply an electrical discharge. The idea was to fly the kite into the storm clouds and conduct electricity down the kite string. His father, Josiah Franklin (1657-1745), a native of England, was a candle and soap maker. Static electricity had been known about for thousands of years, although never fully understood, with most scientists believing that it was an 'invisible liquid'.įranklin's contribution was that he believed that lightning was a form of static electricity on a huge scale, and designed a number of experiments to try to ascertain the truth.Īfter designing experiments with conducting lightning rods, which proved dangerous, he settled upon using a kite. Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in colonial Boston. The first thing to note is that Benjamin Franklin did not discover electricity - the principle was known long before that and primitive capacitors and batteries were already in use by researchers.
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