The Kite Experiment

Day 283 / 365

We read about so many fascinating stories in our childhood and we don’t give them a second thought. But every now and then I am reminded of these facts or stories and the more I think about it, the more interesting they seem to be.

Take Benjamin Franklin for example. He was one of the founding fathers of America. And we have all read the story about how he flew a kite during a thunderstorm to show that the lightening in the sky was just electricity.

But that’s pretty much all I remember. Why did he do it? How did he not die? and how was he planning to prove his hypotheses? I decided to look all this up. This actually has it’s own dedicated Wikipedia page — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kite_experiment

Benjamin Franklin had initially proposed the use of conducting rods to prove the same thing. But that required them to be put up at big heights, and he lived in Philadelphia, which had largely plain terrain. So he thought he’ll use a kite instead.

The setup was like this. He used a hemp string to fly the kite, which will become conductive when wet. The kite itself was made up of silk so that it wouldn’t tear in the rain. The kite had a small metal rod on top of it as well. At the other end of the string, they had a metal ring, which was then connected to a Leyden jar with a metal wire. Leyden jars are these ancient things that could store high voltage electrical charge.

His son William helped him out in the experiment as well. The kite was not struck by any visible lightning during this experiment. And this was a good thing, otherwise, both of them would have surely been killed. But the kite still managed to pick up enough charge to charge the Leyden jar.

When Benjamin moved his hand near the key, he got a small shock. Thus proving the electrical nature of lightning.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — Stoic Teachings by Epictetus