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Happy birthday, Ben Franklin.

Article Excerpt
JANUARY 17, 2006, was the three hundredth anniversary of Benjamin Franklin's birth. As you no doubt know, Benjamin Franklin was one of our country's Founding Fathers, which means he was a troublemaker. (If you don't believe us, ask King George.) Franklin was also a writer, a philosopher, a statesman, a printer, a scientist, and an inventor. As you might guess, we're most interested in these last two occupations.

Franklin made scientific discoveries in a wide range of fields. While he was postmaster general, he invented an odometer and used it to measure the length of postal routes. He invented the Franklin stove, a urinary catheter, bifocals, and the lightning rod.

Though we respect Franklin's industry and inventiveness, Pat has a bone to pick with him. Her complaint relates to the area in which Franklin made some of his greatest discoveries: electricity.

But before we get to Pat's complaints, we'll tell you a little about electricity. Usually, at this point in our column, we connect our topic to science fiction, citing this story or that novel. But when it comes to electricity, Pat maintains that the connection is actually to fantasy. Understanding electricity requires accepting the existence of worlds that you can't see or experience directly. When you start poking around, trying to figure out what's going on, you find out things are much weirder than you ever figured. You don't exactly open a door in the back of a wardrobe and walk through into another world, but close enough.

Just as so many fantasy novels begin in our familiar world, we will begin with something familiar: the spark of static electricity that jumps from your finger to a doorknob after you walk across a wool carpet.

That's static electricity or electrostatics.

SUSPENDED CHILDREN AND SPINNING SULFUR BALLS

In Franklin's time, scientists in Europe had been studying electrostatics for hundreds of years. They knew that if you rubbed wool on the fossilized tree sap known as amber, then the amber would attract little pieces of paper. In 1600, William Gilbert coined the name for the science of electricity from the Greek name for amber: elektron.

In 1660, Otto Von Guericke experimented with a spinning sulfur ball about the size of a child's head. Rubbed with his hand, the ball made sparks and attracted bits of leaves, gold dust, and snips of paper. A woodcut of the period depicts a more elaborate experiment in which a child suspended on silk ropes...

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