Franklin, Benjamin electrical experiments

Benjamin Franklin studied electricity in the mid-1700s. He developed the concept of positive and negative electrical charges. His most famous experiment showed that lightning is an electrical process. 

Fortunately for a poor, would-be chemist like Leblanc, France s aristocratic passion for the physical sciences crossed economic, social, and political borders. Intellectuals such as Rousseau and Diderot cultivated the sciences with enthusiasm and compiled encyclopedias and dictionaries of natural substances. Local academies and institutes in the far-flung provinces sponsored chemical studies. Crowds flocked to hear chemists lecture and to watch their flashy laboratory demonstrations. Even the future revolutionary, Jean-Paul Marat, experimented with fire, electricity, and light and tried—in vain—to become a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences. In America, Benjamin Franklin abandoned his printing and publishing business for physics, and in England his friend Jane Marcet wrote Mrs Marcet s Conversations in Chemistry for women and working-class men. 

Lord Charles Cavendish might not have been wealthy, but he was a natural philosopher and experienced experimentalist. Indeed his research on heat, electricity, and magnetism earned him praise from Benjamin Franklin. Henry must have learned a lot from his father, because he, too, became a meticulous experimenter. Some of Henry s experiments in physics and most of his chemical experiments were performed while he was still living under his father s roof. 

Benjamin Franklin, author and renowned statesman, was also an inventor and a scientist. Every schoolchild knows of Franklin s experiment with a kite and a key, demonstrating that lightning is electricity. Less well known is that his measurement of the extent to which oil spreads on water makes possible a simple estimate of molecular size and Avogadro s number. 

Benjamin Franklin and Mme. Marie Curie were experimental physicists. Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein were theoretical physicists, perhaps the greatest. In the earlier days, the tools, both experimental and mathematical, were so simple that a single man or woman could become skilled in the use of both kinds. Isaac Newton not only made the thrilling experiment of breaking sunlight into colors with a prism, but actually invented for his own use one of the most useful forms of mathematics, the calculus. Franklin contributed to electrical theory. Nowadays some of the tools are so complex that few physicists are versatile enough to become masters of them all. 

One of the great pioneers in the development of electrical science was Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790). One of his important researches dealt with the theory of the Leyden Jar. By ingenious experiments he showed that the electrical charges rested, not on the inner and outer metallic coatings, but rather in the glass separating them. Another epocli-... 

It is named for Joseph Priestley, who was born in England on March 13, 1733. He performed many important scientific experiments, one of which led to the discovery that a gas later identified as carbon dioxide could be dissolved in water to produce seltzer. Also, as a result of meeting Benjamin Franklin in London in 1766, Priestley became interested in electricity and was the first to observe that graphite was an electrical conductor. However, his greatest discovery occurred in 1774 when he isolated oxygen by heating mercuric oxide. 

Experimental Researches and Observations on Electricity made at Philadelphia and communicated in several letters to Mr. Collinson in LondoUy London, 1751 1752 (with Second Communication)y 1754 (with Third Communication) New Edition of the Whole, 4°, 1766 with Additions, 1769,117 f. The Complete Works, London, 1806, i, 165-440 new ed. by I. B. Cohen, Benjamin Franklin s Experiments, Cambridge, Mass., 1941. The letters run from 1747 to 1754. 

At this time his interest in science deepened. During a visit to London an event occurred that became decisive in his life. He met Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) and was introduced to scientific society. Priestley was so inspired that he started to write The History and Present State of Electricity, which included original experiments and illustrations. This led to his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1766. Priestley was 33 and his scientific career had begun. 

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