Word: kiting
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
LIGHTNING RODS Well before the famous kite experiment, Franklin had speculated that lightning was electricity. His revolutionary idea was to conduct that electricity safely into the ground to save buildings from fires. The simple metal rod connected to a wire made Franklin famous throughout Europe and the colonies...
...iconic moment in American history studied by generations of schoolkids. On a storm-tossed June day in 1752, Ben Franklin, joined by his son William, hoisted a kite with a wire poking out of it high over Philadelphia. As the skies darkened, the kite's hemp string bristled with electricity, like a cat's fur after being stroked. Franklin brought his knuckles close to a brass key dangling from the end of the string. A spark leaped through the air, giving him a powerful jolt--and immeasurable pleasure. No longer could anyone doubt that the small electrical charges created...
...latest skepticism is voiced in a quirky new book, Bolt of Fate (Public Affairs), that calls the whole thing a hoax, echoing the spoofs Franklin confected for Poor Richard's Almanack. But author Tom Tucker's evidence is slim. He makes much of the improbability of flying a kite weighted down by a heavy key, ignoring Franklin's long history of kite flying, and of his delay in publicizing the experiment, though only three months elapsed. More to the point, scientific fraud seems wildly out of character for Franklin. As Harvard chemist and Franklin buff Dudley Herschbach, a Nobel laureate...
...larger issue, however, is not whether Ben flew the kite, which most scholars agree he did, but how significant his Philadelphia experiment was. In fact, many of his scientific breakthroughs were of great import--and he had a selfless urge to share his new knowledge. When Franklin caught the electricity bug in his 40s, "electrick fire" was a playful if puzzling entertainment. His experiments led him to startlingly modern conclusions. The "fire," he said, is a single "fluid," not the dual "vitreous" and "resinous" electricities postulated by European savants. It exists in two states: plus and minus (terms he coined...
...that spring (and of the King's compliments to Monsieur Franklin), he set about undertaking it himself in June of that year--with a special wrinkle. The steeple he had hoped to use was unfinished, and he decided he could prove his case just as easily with a wired kite. It would rise even higher in the sky. So why did he do it on the sly? Joseph Priestley, the British chemist and a Franklin crony, later explained, "... dreading the ridicule which too commonly attends unsuccessful attempts in science, he communicated his intended experiment to nobody...