Did Ben Franklin really discover electricity with a kite?

Everybody has heard the famous story of how pioneering experimenter–and part-time founding father–Ben Franklin tied a key to a kite string and flew the kite in a thunderstorm. The kite was hit by lightning, and zap! Franklin had discovered electricity.

Fried Franklin

Well, it makes a better story than it does an experiment. The danger is that lightning is not something you want to play with, and you certainly don’t want to attract it to yourself! Were this story to be true, I’m afraid, the result would have been fried Franklin.

What Ben actually did in his famous 1752 experiment was to cause some excess electrical charge near a storm cloud to ground out through his kite string–still an impressive demonstration, but a much less powerful prospect than an actual lightning strike.

Myths

Nor is it true that Franklin discovered electricity, as people tend to say. What he was trying to do was to demonstrate that lightning itself is simply a powerful electric discharge between the clouds and the earth. In this he was entirely correct.

Now, did you know that two of the basic terms we use even today to describe electric charge were coined by Franklin? Next time.

本.富兰克林没有被雷击

本.富兰克林真的靠一只风筝发现了电吗?

大家都听过这个有名的故事：本.富兰克林这位开创性的实验者兼开国之父如将一把钥匙系到风筝线上，并在电闪雷鸣的恶劣天气下放风筝。风筝被闪电击中烧毁了，于是富兰克林发现了电。

烧焦的富兰克林

我们最好把它当成一个故事而非实验。这个实验的危险之处在于：闪电不是你能玩耍的东西，当然你也不想引“电”上身。如果这个故事是真的，恐怕富兰克林早已被烧焦了。

在1752年这次著名的实验中，本所做的就是将暴风云附近的过量电荷通过风筝线引到地面上来，虽然相比实际雷击威力要小很多，但它仍是一个令人印象深刻的证明。

神话

事实上，富兰克林也没有像人们所说的那样发现了电。他所努力做的一切就是要证明：闪电本身只是云和地球之间的一种威力巨大的放电现象，在这一点上，他是完全正确的。

时至今日我们仍用以描述电荷的两个基本术语是富兰克林创造的，你知道吗?这个问题我们下次详述。