![]() ![]() Popular lore suggests he wanted the wild turkey rather than the bald eagle-both animals native to North America-to be named the national bird of the United States. Besides electricity, Franklin had a vested interest in the birds. The reason why Franklin took such detailed precautions may very well have been due to his earlier encounter with a turkey. Precisely because he survived, his kite experiment is now world famous. Given the magnitude of electricity that Franklin was handling, his precautions may seem insufficient to modern observers nevertheless, he did consider the dangers and had planned accordingly to protect his life. And, just as importantly, he’d live to tell about it. He’d captured the thundercloud’s electricity in a glass jar, making history in the process. Franklin then touched the metal key to an electrode protruding from the top of a Leyden jar (an electricity-storing glass jar recently invented by Dutch physicist Pieter van Musschenbroek). Sure enough, when the kite was in the sky, static electricity moved down the wet string as far as the key-but not through the silk ribbon to his body. To ensure the silk ribbon remained dry, he flew the kite while standing in a small rain shelter. ![]() He would control the kite by holding the silk ribbon rather than the string.īureau of Engraving and Printing engraved vignette titled Franklin and Electricity Public domain via Wikimedia Commonsīecause dry silk is an excellent electrical insulator, Franklin felt it would provide him the needed protection against the electricity. So, he decided to take precautions by tying the end of the kite string to a metal key and connecting the key to a silk ribbon. But he was concerned that if he were to hold the end of the kite string directly, he might very well be killed as the electricity passed through him. ![]() He reasoned that static electricity in the cloud would be attracted to the wire and flow down the wet kite string on its way to the ground. Spark: The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of LifeĪ fresh look at electricity and its powerful role in life on Earth Buyįranklin’s strategy for the June 1752 experiment-inspired, perhaps, by that avian accident-was to fly a kite with a wire pointing up from its top near a passing thundercloud. ![]()
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