3 Electrical experiments

Chapter 3 Electrical experiments Thales had made a good start, but no one learned much more about electricity until William Gilbert, over 2,000 years later.

Gilbert lived in the 1600s. He was Queen Elizabeth I's doctor, but he was more interested in magnets than medicine. In his spare time, he studied magnetism and tried out Thales' experiments with amber. Excuse me! What about your royal patient?

Soon, other scientists were doing their own electrical experiments. An American named Benjamin Franklin thought that lightning was an electrical force in nature. In 1752, he decided to prove it.

Like Thales, Gilbert saw that rubbing amber gave it a pulling force. But he realized this wasn't quite the same as a magnetic force. So Gilbert named it electricity, from the Greek word for amber, elektron. It's electric! One is not amused.

He believed that Electrical Fire- his name for lightning- could travel through a metal object such as a key. But he had to make sure the lightning reached the key, so he set up an experiment with a kite. First he made a kite with a metal spike at the top. At the bottom of the kite string he tied a key. Then he flew the kite in a thunderstorm.

It worked! Electricity flowed from the clouds into the kite and down the wet kite string to the key. When Franklin put his finger near the key on the end, he saw a spark. It looks like the spark you get with amber. It's electricity! By the way, you should never try this yourself. Franklin was lucky not to be badly hurt. The electrical force in lightning is so strong, it kills people.