Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Static electricity is an imbalance of electric charges within or on the surface of a material. The charge remains until it can move away by an electric current or electrical discharge . The word "static" is used to differentiate it from current electricity , where an electric charge flows through an electrical conductor .
Stephen Gray (December 1666 – 7 February 1736) was an English dyer and astronomer who was the first to systematically experiment with electrical conduction.Until his work in 1729 the emphasis had been on the simple generation of static charges and investigations of the static phenomena (electric shocks, plasma glows, etc.).
Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky, an artistic rendition of Franklin's kite experiment painted by Benjamin West, c. 1816 The BEP engraved the vignette Franklin and Electricity (c. 1860) which was used on the $10 National Bank Note from the 1860s to 1890s.
[40] [42] William Watson, when experimenting with the Leyden jar, discovered in 1747 that a discharge of static electricity was equivalent to an electric current. Capacitance was first observed by Von Kleist of Leyden in 1754. [43] Von Kleist happened to hold, near his electric machine, a small bottle, in the neck of which there was an iron nail.
In 1832, he completed a series of experiments aimed at investigating the fundamental nature of electricity; Faraday used "static", batteries, and "animal electricity" to produce the phenomena of electrostatic attraction, electrolysis, magnetism, etc. He concluded that, contrary to the scientific opinion of the time, the divisions between the ...
Machines that generated static electricity with a glass disc were popular and widespread in Europe by 1740. [3] In 1745, German cleric Ewald Georg von Kleist and Dutch scientist Pieter van Musschenbroek discovered independently that the electric charge from these machines could be stored in a Leyden jar , named after the city of Leiden in the ...
Armstrong Hydroelectric Machine. The Armstrong effect is the physical process by which static electricity is produced by the friction of a fluid. It was first discovered in 1840 when an electrical spark resulted from water droplets being swept out by escaping steam from a boiler.
1791 – Luigi Galvani discovers galvanic electricity and bioelectricity through experiments following an observation that touching exposed muscles in frogs' legs with a scalpel which had been close to a static electrical machine caused them to jump. He called this "animal electricity".