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Electricity
Electric History
Electric Journey
Fun Facts
Lightning Strike
Hydropower
Electricity Generation
Let's Explore Coal
How Coal is Formed
Coal Mining
Processing Coal
Electricity from Coal
The Environment
Nuclear Power
Nuclear History
Power Plants in the US
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Let's Explore Electric History!Franklin l Faraday l Latimer l Edison I Tesla
Ben Franklin was born in 1706 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was not only a scientist and inventor, but also noted as being a statesman, a printer, philosopher, postmaster, musician and economist. Ben was even one of the founding fathers of our country signing the Declaration of Independence. Franklin is most famous for his curiosity and experimentation with electricity and other natural occurances. In 1743, he observed that storms traveled in an opposite direction than their winds. Traveling on horseback, he would chase these storms and whirlwinds and found that these storms could be plotted. He found that northeast storms actually started in the southeast. He even began printing his weather forcasts in his almanac, making Ben a weatherman! From observing these storms he became more interested in the effects of lightning. As an inventor Ben was most noted for his famous kite flight experiment. Franklin did not invent electricity, but as a result of his experiments, he did invent the lightning rod which protects buildings, homes and ships from lightning damage from a strike.
Ben Franklin Electrical Terms:
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Ben suspected that lighning was an electrical current coming from nature. On a stormy day in June of 1752 he decided to test his theory using a child's toy kite and a metal key. This experiment would prove lightning was really a stream of electrified air or plasma as we call it today. This led him to more experiments and the development of electrical terms we use today.
