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Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there,

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Speaker 1: and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, job and Strickland,

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Speaker 1: I'm an executive producer with iHeart Podcasts and how the

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Speaker 1: tech are you? So it is Friday, It's time for

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Speaker 1: a classic episode, which means we dive into the tech

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Speaker 1: Stuff archive and pull out an episode from our past

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Speaker 1: to listen to. This one, originally published on June twenty eighth,

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Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, is called The History of Electricity Heart one,

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Speaker 1: which kind of spoils what we're going to be talking

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Speaker 1: about in next week's classic episode, but you know, there's

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Speaker 1: no gain around it. I hope you enjoy this classic episode.

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Speaker 1: So first, let's define what electricity is, or rather, instead

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Speaker 1: of letting me define it, let's use Miriam Webster, because

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Speaker 1: that's kind of their job. Electricity is a fundamental form

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Speaker 1: of energy, observable in positive and negative forms, that occurs

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Speaker 1: naturally as in lightning, or is produced as in a generator,

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Speaker 1: and that is expressed in terms of the movement and

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Speaker 1: interaction of electrons. That's actually kind of a little simplistic.

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Speaker 1: It's talking about the move of electrons. It's really more

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Speaker 1: about the move of electric charge and not of electrons. Specifically,

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Speaker 1: if you had some other carrier that was carrying electric charge,

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Speaker 1: it would be more about the movement of that carrier.

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Speaker 1: As it turns out, electrons are the naturally occurring negatively

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Speaker 1: charged particles sub atomic particles that are concerned, especially with electronics.

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Speaker 1: So it's understandable, but I just want to point that

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Speaker 1: out that it's really more about electric charge and less

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Speaker 1: about the actual sub atomic particles. Don't worry, even though

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Speaker 1: we'll be talking a lot about electrons. I promise this

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Speaker 1: show won't be too negative. I'm seriously done with pun

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Speaker 1: for just a bit now. To further define electricity, it

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Speaker 1: helps if we get some basic ideas established. Now, keep

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Speaker 1: in mind these aspects of electricity were not understood for centuries.

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Speaker 1: So when I go into the history of electricity, remember

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Speaker 1: that for the vast majority of our experience working with

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Speaker 1: and trying to understand electricity, we did not have any

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Speaker 1: knowledge of the underpinning foundational physics. Right we were making

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Speaker 1: observations and we were even building things that could take

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Speaker 1: advantage of this stuff, but we didn't actually understand what

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Speaker 1: it was doing or how it was working, which I

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Speaker 1: always find really fascinating this idea that we can harness

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Speaker 1: something without fully understanding what it is and how it works.

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Speaker 1: But it's good for us, as in myself and you

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Speaker 1: guys the audience, to understand some of these basics before

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Speaker 1: we get too far into the discussion. Otherwise I have

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Speaker 1: to keep interrupting the history lesson for science lessons, and

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Speaker 1: then it gets kind of a little complicated. Some of

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Speaker 1: that's gonna happen anyway, but I want to get the

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Speaker 1: foundation out of the way. So the most important thing

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Speaker 1: to remember here is that we're talking electric charge, and

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Speaker 1: we want to make sure we can make sense of this.

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Speaker 1: It's time to get current on our terms. So I

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Speaker 1: guess that really wasn't the last pun I'll be talking about.

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Speaker 1: So electric charge comes in two flavors, positive and negative,

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Speaker 1: positive charge and negative charge. You're probably very familiar with this.

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Speaker 1: On the sub atomic particle level, pot you know, we

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Speaker 1: have our protons, those are positively charged. We have our electrons,

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Speaker 1: those are negatively charged. Now, opposite charges attract one another

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Speaker 1: in circuits. A carrier moves negative charges to a source

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Speaker 1: of positive charge. So some sort of sub atomic particle

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Speaker 1: needs to carry that negative charge throughout a circuit until

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Speaker 1: it can get to the source of a positive charge.

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Speaker 1: Because negative quote unquote wants to be with positive. It

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Speaker 1: doesn't really want anything, it's just that's the natural tendency,

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Speaker 1: right these for these two different charges to attract one another. Now,

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Speaker 1: in practical terms, the carrier is an electron. So that's

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Speaker 1: why we talk about electricity, it's why we talk about electronics.

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Speaker 1: It's the subatomic particle that possesses negative charge. So if

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Speaker 1: we do a basic electrostatic experiment where we take a

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Speaker 1: block of wax and we rub that block of wax

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Speaker 1: with some wool, we will build up an electrostatic charge.

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Speaker 1: So what's happening is we are imparting a negative charge

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Speaker 1: to the wax and creating a positive charge to the wool. So,

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Speaker 1: in practical terms, that means the wax has a surplus

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Speaker 1: of electrons and the wool has a deficiency of electrons. Effectively,

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Speaker 1: you are rubbing some of the electrons from the wool

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Speaker 1: onto the wax. That makes the overall charge of the

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Speaker 1: surface of the wax negative. It makes the overall charge

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Speaker 1: of the surface of the wall possi And if we

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Speaker 1: create a pathway that electrons can follow from the wax

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Speaker 1: to the woll. Then electrons will take that pathway pop

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Speaker 1: back over to the wool and sort of repair that

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Speaker 1: deficiency where that deficiency of electrons will be balanced out,

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Speaker 1: where electrons will journey back over and rejoin, and they'll

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Speaker 1: probably be a big party, you know, or at least

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Speaker 1: a sub atomic one. And that's the basics for electric charge.

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Speaker 1: So now we have to build on this foundation. There

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Speaker 1: are three other basic concepts that we need to understand,

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Speaker 1: and those are voltage, current, and resistance. Now these will

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Speaker 1: be important throughout the discussion of electricity, particularly as people

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Speaker 1: begin to get a deeper understanding of what was actually

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Speaker 1: happening with electricity. Voltage is probably the trickiest one for

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Speaker 1: people who aren't inclined toward electronics and electricity. It's all

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Speaker 1: about potential energy, specifically the potential energy represented by a

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Speaker 1: pair of different electric charges. So voltage is sort of

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Speaker 1: like pressure. You can imagine it as a force that

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Speaker 1: pushes electrons through a conductor, which is oversimplifying, but it's

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Speaker 1: helpful when you imagine it that way. So voltage is

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Speaker 1: the pressure in the system. The higher the voltage, the

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Speaker 1: greater the pressure, the stronger that push is a low

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Speaker 1: voltage has very little push, while high voltage has a

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Speaker 1: whole lot of push, and we need voltage to make

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Speaker 1: electronics work. Otherwise nothing is going to cause a current

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Speaker 1: to flow through a circuit. You can also kind of

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Speaker 1: think of it as potential energy in the form of

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Speaker 1: as an analogy of kinetic energy. So let's say that

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Speaker 1: you have a level surface upon which you've got a

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Speaker 1: two little corrals of marbles. They don't really have any

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Speaker 1: potential energy with respect to one another, they're on the

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Speaker 1: same level. But let's say you raise one of those up.

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Speaker 1: You tilt it and you raise it up, so the

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Speaker 1: corral is still holding the marbles in. But now the

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Speaker 1: marbles have potential energy because they're at a higher level

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Speaker 1: than the lower marbles. And then let's say you were

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Speaker 1: to connect a little slide between the top corral and

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Speaker 1: the bottom corral and allow the marbles to roll down

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Speaker 1: the hill. Well, this would be sort of like a

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Speaker 1: copper wire connecting an area that has a surplus of

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Speaker 1: electrons to an area that has a deficiency of electrons.

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Speaker 1: It's allowing for the movement of those electrons. Now, in

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Speaker 1: the case of voltage, we're really talking about electric potential.

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Speaker 1: Here we're not talking about kinetic energy or potential energy

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Speaker 1: that could be converted into kinetic energy. Is really just

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Speaker 1: meant as an analogy. So when we talk about voltage,

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Speaker 1: we talk about it with respect of two points on

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Speaker 1: a circuit. So a voltage difference between two points on

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Speaker 1: a single circuit and their potential difference really which we

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Speaker 1: may also call a voltage. The potential difference between two

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Speaker 1: points is measured in a unit called volts. No big

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Speaker 1: surprise there. A volt is the amount of energy needed

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Speaker 1: to force an electrical current of one ampier more on

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Speaker 1: that in a second, through a resistance of one ome

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Speaker 1: more on that in a second two at a particular temperature. Now,

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Speaker 1: you can have a voltage between two points without having

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Speaker 1: any connection between them, So you can have a voltage

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Speaker 1: between two things that do not have an active pathway

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Speaker 1: between the two. If the distance between the two points

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Speaker 1: is decreased, then that electrostatic field that the voltage difference

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Speaker 1: creates will intensify. If you increase the space between those

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Speaker 1: two points, the electrostatic field will diminish. So distance plays

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Speaker 1: a factor, not just the difference in voltage, so that

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Speaker 1: covers voltage, but now let's talk about current. So technically

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Speaker 1: the current is a flow of electrical charge, and we

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Speaker 1: commonly think of it as the movement of electrons, but

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Speaker 1: again that's an oversimplification. You can actually have a flow

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Speaker 1: of positive charge and that would still be a current.

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Speaker 1: If you add a flow of positive charge, that's technically

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Speaker 1: a current. But when we're talking about circuits and electronics,

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Speaker 1: we're really talking about electrons, not positively charged electrical charges,

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Speaker 1: So we tend to simplify it and say it's the

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Speaker 1: flow of electrons. Just keep in mind that is an

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Speaker 1: oversimplification because electrons are the charge carriers of negative charge. Now,

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Speaker 1: in a way, you could think of it as electrons

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Speaker 1: are the messengers and the electric charge they carry is

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Speaker 1: the message, and that's what's really important. But in practical terms,

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Speaker 1: we can just simplify it to electrons. We measure current

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Speaker 1: in ampiers and that gives us a sense of the

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Speaker 1: intensity or quantity of a charge. So voltage is the

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Speaker 1: force behind moving a charge, and amperage tells you how

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Speaker 1: much charge is actually moving. And this can help if

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Speaker 1: you start to imagine voltage as being a locomotive engine

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Speaker 1: and the amperage as being a series of train cars.

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Speaker 1: So a low amperage current you might think of as

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Speaker 1: just being two or three train cars being pushed by

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Speaker 1: a locomotive engine. But you might think of a high

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Speaker 1: amperage as being a series of train cars like fifteen

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Speaker 1: or twenty being pushed by that same locomotive engine. In

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Speaker 1: both cases, the locomotive engine is putting out the same

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Speaker 1: amount of force. It's just that in one case it's

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Speaker 1: pushing a relatively small number of train cars and the

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Speaker 1: other one that's pushing a larger number. But the amount

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Speaker 1: of force that's using for both is the same. So

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Speaker 1: that's the difference between current and voltage, or if you

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Speaker 1: prefer amperage and volts. Now, current will get a bit

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Speaker 1: more confusing when we start talking about the direction of flow,

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Speaker 1: and that's thanks to a certain founding father of the

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Speaker 1: United States. But I don't want to jump ahead. We'll

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Speaker 1: get there. When we get there, I'll save that for

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Speaker 1: a little bit later in this episode. Finally, we have

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Speaker 1: the concept of resistance, and as the name suggests, this

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Speaker 1: is the property of a material to resist the flow

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Speaker 1: of electric charge. A material with a very high resistance

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Speaker 1: is an insulator. It does not allow electric charge to

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Speaker 1: pass through it very easily. You would have to use

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Speaker 1: a great deal of energy to move an electric charge

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Speaker 1: through that kind of material. A material with very low

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Speaker 1: resistance is a conductor. It will allow electric charge to

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Speaker 1: flow through relatively easily. Now, even conductors have resistance. You

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Speaker 1: have to get to very low temperatures, like super frozen

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Speaker 1: temperatures almost close to absolute zero to get to super

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Speaker 1: conductivity where you have zero resistance and a conductor becomes

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Speaker 1: an ideal or perfect conductor. But at other temperatures there's

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Speaker 1: some resistance. You can get around that by making a

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Speaker 1: cable thicker. Thin cables have a higher resistance than thicker cables,

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Speaker 1: But that's kind of beyond what we're talking about here.

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Speaker 1: We measure resistance in Ohms and Ohm. George Ohm, who

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Speaker 1: is a physician who kind of figured all this stuff out,

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Speaker 1: developed Ohm's law. Now that tells us that voltage is

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Speaker 1: equal to current times resistance, or you could say current

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Speaker 1: is equal to voltage divided by resistance, or that resistance

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Speaker 1: is equal to voltage divided by current. It's this relationship

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Speaker 1: between current, resistance and voltage that is inherent in electricity

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Speaker 1: and electronics. Now, those basic concepts are the very foundation

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Speaker 1: for all electronics. Now, obviously it gets more complicated and

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Speaker 1: you can add in all sorts of different elements besides that,

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Speaker 1: with like diodes and things of that nature. But I

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Speaker 1: just wanted to get that covered as the basis for

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Speaker 1: the conversation that follows. And now we're going to dive

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Speaker 1: into a history lesson. So humans have known about electricity

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Speaker 1: in some form for millennia fales of Melitas, And I

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Speaker 1: know I'm mispronouncing that, So to all my Greek historians

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Speaker 1: out there, I deeply apologize, but I have little Latin

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Speaker 1: and less Greek. Along with my buddy Shakespeare. Anyway, he

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Speaker 1: had noted that amber, the material amber, would attract light

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Speaker 1: materials to its surface after being rubbed. So if you

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Speaker 1: rubbed amber with a cloth and then held it toward feathers,

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Speaker 1: for example, you had notice that feathers would have a

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Speaker 1: tendency to be attracted to the amber. Now, later on

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Speaker 1: we would understand that this is static electricity, this is

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Speaker 1: building an electrostatic charge using amber. But this was more

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Speaker 1: of an observation back in those times, and this is

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Speaker 1: centuries before the Common era, and in fact, the word

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Speaker 1: electricity comes from the last an electrom, which in turn

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Speaker 1: comes from the Greek electron, which means amber. So when

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Speaker 1: we talk about electrons, that means that's the Greek word

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Speaker 1: for amber. And it's because of this initial well not

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Speaker 1: even initial, but this early observation. I just thought that

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Speaker 1: was kind of interesting, and you would eventually learn that

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Speaker 1: a future engineer scientist named this whole process electricity in

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Speaker 1: honor of this early observation. Now in nineteen thirty six,

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Speaker 1: we're jumping ahead just to talk about another discovery about

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Speaker 1: ancient civilizations. There was a railroad project that ended up

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Speaker 1: excavating some ruins southeast of Baghdad, and they revealed what

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Speaker 1: we have commonly referred to as the Bagdad batteries. These

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Speaker 1: were vessels that appeared to have been designed specifically to

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Speaker 1: generate electricity. At least that's one of the hypotheses about

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Speaker 1: these these vessels. Some people disagree, but it's a very

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Speaker 1: popular one. Now you probably have heard about this in

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Speaker 1: some form of another or another. You may have even

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Speaker 1: seen the MythBusters episode where they talked about this. The

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Speaker 1: team in MythBusters talked about the possible applications for these

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Speaker 1: so called batteries, which could include a thing that you

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Speaker 1: would use in religious ceremonies, where you would have these

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Speaker 1: metal coded vessels that if you were to touch them,

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Speaker 1: you would create a circuit and you would allow electricity

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Speaker 1: to flow through you, and that would create a tingling

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Speaker 1: or numbing sensation in your hands, thus akin to some

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Speaker 1: sort of mystical experience and thus being part of a

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Speaker 1: religious experience. Or it could be that it was more

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Speaker 1: of a practical approach toward something like electroplating, and I

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Speaker 1: thought that was really cool. So let's talk about what

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Speaker 1: electroplating is, because otherwise, you know, it doesn't really mean

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Speaker 1: any thing to you. As the name implies, electro plating

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Speaker 1: involves using electricity to cover or plate one material with

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Speaker 1: another material. Typically you are plating one type of metal,

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Speaker 1: not necessarily metal, but the early version of electro plating

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Speaker 1: was metal, but one type of metal with a more

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Speaker 1: precious metal. So the reason you might do this is

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Speaker 1: to make really pretty expensive looking stuff without using too

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Speaker 1: much of the actual precious material. So you might gold

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Speaker 1: plate a copper bowl, for example, because you want the

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Speaker 1: gold bowl. Gold is more precious than copper, but you

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Speaker 1: don't want to actually have to go out and dig

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Speaker 1: as much gold as you would need to build a

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Speaker 1: gold bowl. So you want to plate the copper bowl

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Speaker 1: with gold. That way, it looks exactly the way you

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Speaker 1: want it to, but you didn't have to spend all

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Speaker 1: that time and effort getting all that gold. In other words,

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Speaker 1: we can thank the laziness and greed of human beings

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Speaker 1: for some of the early advances as as far as

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Speaker 1: electricity is concerned, So you might want to use electroplating

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Speaker 1: to do that. We also use electroplating for other purposes,

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Speaker 1: like putting rust resistant coatings onto stuff that otherwise would corrode.

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Speaker 1: You can also use it to produce alloys like bronze

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Speaker 1: and brass. But let's go back to electroplating. So let's

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Speaker 1: say these ancient people were using the so called Baghdad

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Speaker 1: batteries in order to electroplate gold onto copper. How would

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Speaker 1: you do this, Well, first, you have to make sure

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Speaker 1: that the copper is totally clean, because if it has

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Speaker 1: any schmutz on it, the gold will not properly adhere

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Speaker 1: to the copper and it'll flake off. So you typically

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Speaker 1: would clean copper this way by dipping it in a

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Speaker 1: solution that either is a really powerful alkaline solution or

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Speaker 1: a very powerful acidic solution to truly clean it. Once

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Speaker 1: you did that, you would then attach a conductor from

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Speaker 1: the battery to the copper that you're playing on electroplating.

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Speaker 1: So if it's a bowl, then you would want to

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Speaker 1: make sure that the terminal, the proper terminal from the

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Speaker 1: Bagdad battery is in contact with that copper bowl. Then

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Speaker 1: you would put that whole thing, the copper bowl with

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Speaker 1: the terminal into an electrolyte solution, which is in this

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Speaker 1: case a gold based electrolyte, so you have gold particles

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Speaker 1: within the electrolyte itself. Now, electrolytes, by the way, are

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Speaker 1: materials that dissociate into ions when dissolved in a suitable medium,

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Speaker 1: and become a conductor of electricity. So ions, of course

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Speaker 1: our variations of atoms that have a net charge on them.

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Speaker 1: They're not neutral. They have either a net negative or

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Speaker 1: a net positive charge. So when you do this, you've

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Speaker 1: got your gold ions in this electrolyte solution. You then

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Speaker 1: put the electrodes together so that not together, but within

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Speaker 1: the solution, and so that a current can pass through

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Speaker 1: the electrodes. Allow the current to go through the electrolyte

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Speaker 1: into the other terminal or the other electrode, and you've

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Speaker 1: got a negative and a positive electrode. So when the

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Speaker 1: current passes through the electrolyte, the electrolyte splits up and

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Speaker 1: some of the metal atoms contained within the electrolyte are

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Speaker 1: deposited on one of the two electrodes that you inserted

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Speaker 1: into the electrolyte. So what's really happening is the metal

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Speaker 1: atoms are ions. They hold that charge, they're attracted to

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Speaker 1: the electrode that has the opposite charge and they attach

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Speaker 1: to it. So if you have a negatively charged terminal

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Speaker 1: and you have positively charged gold ions, that opposite attract

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Speaker 1: rule still takes place, and the gold will plate onto

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Speaker 1: the copper electrode or bowl in this case, and then

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Speaker 1: you've got your gold plated copper thingam a jig, which

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Speaker 1: is kind of cool. Now, there's some who put forth

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Speaker 1: the hypothesis that perhaps ancient people's made other uses of

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Speaker 1: electricity all the way up to even powering lights in

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Speaker 1: ancient Egypt, but most scholars that I have consulted dismissed

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Speaker 1: this as unrealistic. I haven't really seen much evidence to

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Speaker 1: support this apart from some circumstantial evidence. Some supporters cite

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Speaker 1: a hieroglyphic relief that shows what to our modern eyes

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Speaker 1: appears to be an enormous light bulb. But the accepted

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Speaker 1: interpretation of that hieroglyph seems to be that it's a

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Speaker 1: lotus leaf with the figure of a snake on it,

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Speaker 1: not a huge ancient light bulb. Still, it seems that

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Speaker 1: there was at least some knowledge of the existence of electricity,

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Speaker 1: if not what it actually could do or what it was.

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Speaker 1: Now that's a trend that would last for centuries. In fact,

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Speaker 1: we were making use of electricity well before anyone really

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Speaker 1: knew what was going on with it. And again, to me,

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Speaker 1: that is one of the phenomenal things about human history

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Speaker 1: is when we come across these moments where people have

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Speaker 1: figured out something or how to use something without really

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Speaker 1: fully understanding why it is, that could be dangerous. Clearly,

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Speaker 1: there were plenty of cases of that in the nineteen

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Speaker 1: fifties with radiation, where people thought that radiation didn't have

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Speaker 1: any particular harmful effects. You might have seen things about

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Speaker 1: like using X rays in shoe stores so that people

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Speaker 1: could see their feet through the shoes that they were

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Speaker 1: trying on, and then only later did we realize that

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Speaker 1: X rays are an ionizing form of radiation and that

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Speaker 1: we probably should not or definitely should not have been

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Speaker 1: doing that same sort of thing with electricity. We were

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Speaker 1: putting it to use before we ever really understood what

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Speaker 1: was going on there. But of course electricity isn't ionizing radiation,

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Speaker 1: so it does have very different effects than radiation does.

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Speaker 1: But what follows is a brief history of the developments

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Speaker 1: that unfolded as very very smart people figured out what

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Speaker 1: the heck electricity is. So in the fifteen hundreds you

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Speaker 1: had an English physician and proto scientist named William Gilbert

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Speaker 1: who began to experiment with magnets and static electricity. So

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Speaker 1: he used loadstone, which is naturally magnetic iron ore, and

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Speaker 1: he published his work in sixteen hundred under the title

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Speaker 1: d Magnetae or Magnety. It's magneto but with a knee.

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Speaker 1: He was able to describe magnetism and static electricity as

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Speaker 1: distinct phenomena, though he wasn't really sure what was actually

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Speaker 1: causing it. His hypothesis was that there was some sort

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Speaker 1: of fluid or humor, as in the various humors of

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Speaker 1: the body. There was another prevailing physical theory at the time,

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Speaker 1: and that this was the cause of attraction with static electricity,

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Speaker 1: and that if you rubbed amber, what you were actually

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Speaker 1: doing was removing some of that fluid from the amber,

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Speaker 1: which created a hole or like a vacuum around it,

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Speaker 1: and this is why light objects would become a tra

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Speaker 1: to the amber. He called it effluvium and described it

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Speaker 1: as an electric effect. In sixteen sixty, an inventor named

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Speaker 1: Auto von Geirica built a machine using a globe made

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Speaker 1: of sulfur, and if you rubbed the globe as it turned,

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Speaker 1: you could build up a charge, an electrostatic charge, causing

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Speaker 1: it to attract small light objects, such as feathers or

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Speaker 1: scraps of paper. Gherica also observed that his invention would

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Speaker 1: cause a spark if you rubbed the globe for long enough.

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Speaker 1: You could then touch something metal like a brass knob,

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Speaker 1: and see a spark fly between the electrostatically charged object

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Speaker 1: and the grounded piece of metal. Stephen Gray, another English scientist,

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Speaker 1: observed in seventeen twenty nine that some stuff doesn't conduct

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Speaker 1: electricity at all, so he thought some materials would allow

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Speaker 1: the fluid of electricity to flow through, and other materials

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Speaker 1: would hamper the flow of this fluid. Electricity would which

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Speaker 1: is sort of true when you get to electrical resistance,

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Speaker 1: only we're not talking about a fluid really. Later that century,

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Speaker 1: Dutch inventor's Pietr von Mussen book and evolved von Kleist

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Speaker 1: created what we now call the Leyden jar, and there

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Speaker 1: are actually two variations on basic Leyden jars, which store

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Speaker 1: electrostatic charges. They're essentially capacitors, So you build up an

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Speaker 1: electric static charge in this thing, and then when you

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Speaker 1: touch the the charged component, you allow that electrostatic charge

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Speaker 1: to discharge to spark, so they release all of that

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Speaker 1: charged energy in an instant. Unlike a battery, which releases

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Speaker 1: uh well, which which creates the voltage difference and allows

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00:24:51,760 --> 00:24:55,399
Speaker 1: for electric electric current to flow over time, a capacitor

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Speaker 1: releases it in a in a moment. The There are

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Speaker 1: two basic versions of the Leaden jar, and the first

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Speaker 1: one uses a metal container inside which you have a

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Speaker 1: glass vessel nestled inside that metal container, and inside the

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Speaker 1: glass vessel you have a second metal container nestled inside that.

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Speaker 1: So it's kind of like a sandwich where the bread

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Speaker 1: is metal container and the bread and the meat inside

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Speaker 1: is glass. I don't recommend eating that sandwich, it would

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00:25:27,440 --> 00:25:31,399
Speaker 1: not taste good and probably hurt you. But it was

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00:25:31,480 --> 00:25:36,639
Speaker 1: that layer metal glass metal, and you would then also

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Speaker 1: have a rod of metal that would extend up from

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Speaker 1: the base of that interior lining. So imagine like a

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Speaker 1: column rising up from that internal metal cup inside the

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Speaker 1: glass vessel, which in turn is inside a larger metal vessel.

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Speaker 1: The second variation has a metal vessel filled with a

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Speaker 1: conductive fluid like water that's got a salt dissolved in it.

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Speaker 1: One or on its own will conduct electricity as long

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Speaker 1: as it has some impurities in it, but you can

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Speaker 1: make it conduct electricity more effectively by adding or doping

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Speaker 1: the water with some of those impurities, and it would

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Speaker 1: have a metal rod sticking out from the water. Now,

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00:26:14,000 --> 00:26:16,440
Speaker 1: both versions would allow you to do essentially the same thing,

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00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:18,879
Speaker 1: which is store up that electrostatic charge. And you do

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00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:23,000
Speaker 1: this by building up an electric static charge in something else.

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Speaker 1: So you might take some amber, for example, and rub

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Speaker 1: the amber. Then you would bring that into contact with

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Speaker 1: that metal bar that's extending upward from the jar. That

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00:26:33,880 --> 00:26:38,360
Speaker 1: would introduce a charge to one plate in this capacitor,

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Speaker 1: and that would create the opposite charge in the opposing plate.

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00:26:44,000 --> 00:26:46,919
Speaker 1: In this case, that exterior metal casing. You would need

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Speaker 1: to ground the outer metal case, which you could just

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Speaker 1: do by touching it yourself, or you could run a

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Speaker 1: wire from the exterior metal case to the ground or

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00:26:56,720 --> 00:26:59,400
Speaker 1: to a metal pipe. And when you create a pathway

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Speaker 1: between the plates by touching the charge grod, it creates

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00:27:02,640 --> 00:27:05,399
Speaker 1: a spark as the charge is able to equalize, and

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00:27:05,440 --> 00:27:08,360
Speaker 1: that could be a significant shock, depending on how much

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00:27:08,400 --> 00:27:11,120
Speaker 1: you've built up inside this Leyden jar to the point

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Speaker 1: where it could really hurt or possibly do serious damage.

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00:27:15,359 --> 00:27:20,680
Speaker 1: Both Kleist and Muschlenbrook had shocking experiences with their respective

432
00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:23,720
Speaker 1: Leyden jars, and neither was really sure exactly what was happening.

433
00:27:24,440 --> 00:27:26,040
Speaker 1: Now we've got a lot more to talk about with

434
00:27:26,119 --> 00:27:31,040
Speaker 1: the early discoveries surrounding electricity. But before we get a

435
00:27:31,160 --> 00:27:33,399
Speaker 1: charge out of all that, let's take a quick break

436
00:27:33,680 --> 00:27:45,840
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsors. All right, We're up to seventeen

437
00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:51,160
Speaker 1: fifty two, and that's when we revisit the great founding

438
00:27:51,240 --> 00:27:55,040
Speaker 1: father I had mentioned earlier, Benjamin Franklin. That's when we

439
00:27:55,080 --> 00:27:59,719
Speaker 1: got the legendary experiments that Franklin conducted. He was friends

440
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:03,600
Speaker 1: with a scientist named Peter Collinson over in Europe, and

441
00:28:04,000 --> 00:28:08,760
Speaker 1: Collinson had sent Franklin an electricity tube. Franklin, like his predecessors,

442
00:28:08,760 --> 00:28:12,240
Speaker 1: thought electricity was a type of fluid, and he hypothesized

443
00:28:12,520 --> 00:28:16,480
Speaker 1: that lightning itself was an electric spark, very much like

444
00:28:16,520 --> 00:28:19,280
Speaker 1: the kind a leaden jar could produce if you built

445
00:28:19,359 --> 00:28:23,600
Speaker 1: up enough of an electrostatic charge, and thus charged forces

446
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:28,040
Speaker 1: would cause a lightning strike. And he further hypothesized that

447
00:28:28,080 --> 00:28:31,600
Speaker 1: you could use a metal rod to draw lightning to

448
00:28:31,640 --> 00:28:36,160
Speaker 1: a specific location, which could end up saving structures from

449
00:28:36,240 --> 00:28:38,480
Speaker 1: being struck by lightning. So if you had a house

450
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 1: and it got hit by lightning back in those days,

451
00:28:40,800 --> 00:28:44,360
Speaker 1: your house would very much be damaged, possibly burned down

452
00:28:44,360 --> 00:28:46,480
Speaker 1: as a result. So he thought, well, maybe you could

453
00:28:46,560 --> 00:28:49,680
Speaker 1: draw lightning away using long metal rods. But the problem

454
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:53,720
Speaker 1: was he couldn't build a metal rod tall enough to

455
00:28:54,280 --> 00:28:56,200
Speaker 1: dwarf the structures. He thought that he was going to

456
00:28:56,280 --> 00:28:59,720
Speaker 1: have to build something that could almost reach the skies themselves,

457
00:29:00,120 --> 00:29:04,280
Speaker 1: which made it too big of a challenge, so he

458
00:29:04,360 --> 00:29:09,400
Speaker 1: came up with this idea of using a kite instead. Meanwhile,

459
00:29:09,440 --> 00:29:14,560
Speaker 1: over in France, Thomas Francois d'alabard decided to put Franklin's

460
00:29:14,560 --> 00:29:17,360
Speaker 1: ideas to the test. He actually constructed a large metal

461
00:29:17,400 --> 00:29:20,720
Speaker 1: pole to try and conduct electricity and declared that Franklin

462
00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:23,840
Speaker 1: was absolutely right that, in fact, that metal rod does

463
00:29:23,960 --> 00:29:28,760
Speaker 1: draw lightning. But this news didn't travel back to America

464
00:29:28,800 --> 00:29:30,800
Speaker 1: that fast. I mean, it took a really long time

465
00:29:30,800 --> 00:29:33,959
Speaker 1: for information to go from one place to another, so

466
00:29:34,040 --> 00:29:39,640
Speaker 1: Franklin was unaware that his hypothesis had proven correct. So

467
00:29:39,720 --> 00:29:43,440
Speaker 1: that same year, Franklin reportedly conducted his experiment using a

468
00:29:43,520 --> 00:29:48,120
Speaker 1: silk kite with a key tied to the silk kite

469
00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:52,080
Speaker 1: down to the string, and as legend goes, he flew

470
00:29:52,080 --> 00:29:54,760
Speaker 1: the kite up during a thunderstorm until the key drew

471
00:29:54,880 --> 00:29:57,920
Speaker 1: lightning to it, and then used that key to charge

472
00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:01,280
Speaker 1: a Leyden jar. So the electric charge in the key

473
00:30:01,720 --> 00:30:04,440
Speaker 1: was then transferred to a leaden jar, which again holds

474
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:09,000
Speaker 1: electrostatic charge. Now, I say reportedly because Franklin's writings never

475
00:30:09,080 --> 00:30:13,040
Speaker 1: outright said that that was what happened. He never specifically

476
00:30:13,080 --> 00:30:16,600
Speaker 1: said that he himself had performed the experiment. Now, he

477
00:30:16,640 --> 00:30:18,960
Speaker 1: did say that he did a simplified version of this

478
00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:21,880
Speaker 1: plan and that it happened in Philadelphia, but it's unclear

479
00:30:21,920 --> 00:30:24,440
Speaker 1: who was actually flying the kite at the time. And

480
00:30:24,480 --> 00:30:28,480
Speaker 1: according to modern scientists, if Franklin had conducted the experiment

481
00:30:28,600 --> 00:30:32,560
Speaker 1: as it has generally been reported, Franklin would have been toasted.

482
00:30:32,880 --> 00:30:36,640
Speaker 1: He would have been fried scientifically speaking, So the general

483
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:42,160
Speaker 1: theory about this not scientific theory, but you general idea

484
00:30:42,160 --> 00:30:45,440
Speaker 1: of what actually happened was that Franklin, if he conducted

485
00:30:45,440 --> 00:30:48,040
Speaker 1: the experiment at all, was able to pick up an

486
00:30:48,080 --> 00:30:51,600
Speaker 1: electrostatic charge by flying the kite near a storm, but

487
00:30:51,720 --> 00:30:54,600
Speaker 1: that the kite was never directly struck by lightning. It

488
00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:58,520
Speaker 1: just rather picked up a charge by being lightning adjacent.

489
00:30:58,640 --> 00:31:01,959
Speaker 1: I guess, as you could say, all quibbling aside. By

490
00:31:02,000 --> 00:31:04,320
Speaker 1: this time, it became established that lightning was in fact

491
00:31:04,360 --> 00:31:09,160
Speaker 1: a really big spark. Therefore part of this concept of electricity.

492
00:31:09,600 --> 00:31:12,680
Speaker 1: Franklin made practical use out of this knowledge by inventing

493
00:31:12,760 --> 00:31:15,200
Speaker 1: the lightning rod. Now, the purpose of a lightning rod

494
00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:17,600
Speaker 1: is to attract a bolt of lightning to the rod

495
00:31:18,080 --> 00:31:22,120
Speaker 1: and then channel the electricity down to the ground. This

496
00:31:22,480 --> 00:31:26,120
Speaker 1: spares structures from being hit by lightning and thus being damaged.

497
00:31:26,160 --> 00:31:29,160
Speaker 1: So your lightning rod typically has a metal cable that

498
00:31:29,280 --> 00:31:32,440
Speaker 1: extends down from the rod and then is bury. It

499
00:31:32,440 --> 00:31:36,120
Speaker 1: has like a conductive stake as well that's buried in

500
00:31:36,160 --> 00:31:40,800
Speaker 1: the ground, and that channels the current from the lightning

501
00:31:40,840 --> 00:31:43,520
Speaker 1: down into the ground. Or really it just gives the

502
00:31:43,520 --> 00:31:46,600
Speaker 1: current a different direction to travel, honestly, but if you

503
00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:49,320
Speaker 1: look at lightning, current goes from the ground up to

504
00:31:49,400 --> 00:31:51,680
Speaker 1: the sky. It doesn't matter. The point being that he

505
00:31:51,720 --> 00:31:54,120
Speaker 1: was able to figure out a way of sparing houses

506
00:31:54,160 --> 00:31:59,040
Speaker 1: by using lightning rods. So he also established something about

507
00:31:59,040 --> 00:32:03,240
Speaker 1: electricity that folks when they're first learning about it. Franklin

508
00:32:03,480 --> 00:32:07,600
Speaker 1: established electricity is having two natures. He called it the

509
00:32:07,640 --> 00:32:11,600
Speaker 1: resinous electricity, which he viewed as a dip in the

510
00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:15,160
Speaker 1: electric fluid from the normal amount and thus negative. So

511
00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:18,480
Speaker 1: this is where the charge is flowing too. This would

512
00:32:18,480 --> 00:32:20,800
Speaker 1: be akin to that idea of a vacuum. You have

513
00:32:20,840 --> 00:32:24,480
Speaker 1: a lack of something a hole, and thus something else

514
00:32:24,520 --> 00:32:27,240
Speaker 1: goes to fill the hole. Then there was what he

515
00:32:27,320 --> 00:32:31,520
Speaker 1: called vitreous electricity, which was an excess of electric fluid

516
00:32:31,600 --> 00:32:35,760
Speaker 1: and thus a positive amount. So Franklin said, the movement

517
00:32:35,800 --> 00:32:40,280
Speaker 1: of electricity goes from positive to negative. You have an

518
00:32:40,360 --> 00:32:43,880
Speaker 1: over abundance of this electric fluid and it moves to

519
00:32:43,920 --> 00:32:49,280
Speaker 1: where you have a deficiency of electric fluid. So this

520
00:32:49,840 --> 00:32:54,600
Speaker 1: is somewhat confusing if you're looking at the scientific description

521
00:32:54,920 --> 00:32:58,240
Speaker 1: of what's happening with your basic electric circuit where you're

522
00:32:58,280 --> 00:33:02,400
Speaker 1: having negatively charged part of that is electrons go from

523
00:33:02,440 --> 00:33:05,360
Speaker 1: an area of high concentration to an area of low concentration.

524
00:33:07,080 --> 00:33:10,560
Speaker 1: It's going from negative to positive, not positives to negative.

525
00:33:10,560 --> 00:33:13,200
Speaker 1: But it's because you're looking at two different definitions of

526
00:33:13,200 --> 00:33:15,640
Speaker 1: what is positive and what is negative. That's where the

527
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:20,800
Speaker 1: real confusion lies. So when we talk about electronics and

528
00:33:20,840 --> 00:33:24,040
Speaker 1: we talk about electron flow and we're looking at it

529
00:33:24,080 --> 00:33:28,640
Speaker 1: purely from a charge perspective, we're looking at negative particles

530
00:33:28,720 --> 00:33:33,240
Speaker 1: moving toward a positive side. But let's make it even

531
00:33:33,240 --> 00:33:35,920
Speaker 1: more confusing than that. There are really two major ways

532
00:33:35,960 --> 00:33:39,720
Speaker 1: to illustrate charge flow in circuits. One of them is

533
00:33:39,760 --> 00:33:43,240
Speaker 1: called conventional flow notation, which is the way electrical engineers

534
00:33:43,280 --> 00:33:48,800
Speaker 1: tend to describe electrical flow, and this follows Franklin's approach.

535
00:33:49,360 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 1: It goes from positive to negative, so electricity flows from

536
00:33:53,240 --> 00:33:57,640
Speaker 1: the positive terminal to the negative terminal. Because we're talking

537
00:33:57,760 --> 00:34:01,920
Speaker 1: about the surplus of electrons to the deficiency of electrons.

538
00:34:02,120 --> 00:34:04,960
Speaker 1: We're not talking about the electric charge, we're talking about

539
00:34:04,960 --> 00:34:08,360
Speaker 1: the number. There's more electrons over here than they're over there,

540
00:34:08,640 --> 00:34:11,320
Speaker 1: So that's why this is going to be the positive

541
00:34:11,400 --> 00:34:14,480
Speaker 1: terminal with more electrons and the negative terminal has fewer

542
00:34:14,480 --> 00:34:19,359
Speaker 1: electrons because we're talking about surplus and deficiency. But there's

543
00:34:19,400 --> 00:34:22,400
Speaker 1: also electron flow notation now that one looks at the

544
00:34:22,440 --> 00:34:26,480
Speaker 1: actual charges, not the numbers. So in that case, the

545
00:34:26,520 --> 00:34:29,080
Speaker 1: negative terminal is where the electrons are and it flows

546
00:34:29,120 --> 00:34:34,120
Speaker 1: to the positive terminal. Both illustrations can describe the exact

547
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:37,640
Speaker 1: same circuit, but they're going to show a difference in

548
00:34:37,680 --> 00:34:40,359
Speaker 1: what is positive and negative terminals, and so it can

549
00:34:40,360 --> 00:34:45,040
Speaker 1: get really confusing. Engineers tend to use that conventional flow notation,

550
00:34:45,160 --> 00:34:49,040
Speaker 1: professional scientists tend to prefer the electron flow notation, and

551
00:34:49,480 --> 00:34:53,160
Speaker 1: thus we're all left scratching our heads. All that being said,

552
00:34:53,200 --> 00:34:55,960
Speaker 1: and an enlightened person might argue that Franklin's description is

553
00:34:55,960 --> 00:34:58,960
Speaker 1: perfectly suitable if we look at other examples of electric

554
00:34:59,040 --> 00:35:02,120
Speaker 1: charge moving across an area, Because yes, in wires we're

555
00:35:02,120 --> 00:35:05,919
Speaker 1: talking about those negatively charged electrons, but in other substances

556
00:35:06,160 --> 00:35:10,600
Speaker 1: you might talk about protons. Or positively charged ions moving

557
00:35:10,840 --> 00:35:13,560
Speaker 1: due to a difference in charge. And because you have

558
00:35:13,600 --> 00:35:18,359
Speaker 1: these positively charged ions or even subatomic particles and their

559
00:35:18,400 --> 00:35:23,720
Speaker 1: movement can also be described as electricity, It's perfectly valid.

560
00:35:23,760 --> 00:35:27,200
Speaker 1: It's just not what we see with electronic circuits. So

561
00:35:27,239 --> 00:35:29,520
Speaker 1: there's that. Still a lot of folks bemow the fact

562
00:35:29,560 --> 00:35:33,040
Speaker 1: that Franklin's decision to name things as he did was

563
00:35:33,239 --> 00:35:35,799
Speaker 1: kind of based on a whim and it made things

564
00:35:35,840 --> 00:35:39,120
Speaker 1: more complicated as we learned more later on. But honestly,

565
00:35:39,120 --> 00:35:41,040
Speaker 1: there was no way for him to know at the time.

566
00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:44,319
Speaker 1: It's not really his fault, it just kind of turned

567
00:35:44,360 --> 00:35:47,880
Speaker 1: out that way. Anyway, back to the timeline, Since we

568
00:35:47,920 --> 00:35:50,840
Speaker 1: won't learn about electrons for a couple one hundred years

569
00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:55,920
Speaker 1: after Benjamin Franklin's work with lightning, we should just go

570
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:59,200
Speaker 1: back to what people were experimenting with and learning about.

571
00:35:59,280 --> 00:36:01,960
Speaker 1: So a few decads after Franklin's experiments, there was a

572
00:36:01,960 --> 00:36:06,600
Speaker 1: guy named Charles Augustine de Colombe who made some significant

573
00:36:06,800 --> 00:36:12,120
Speaker 1: contributions to our understanding of electricity. He published multiple papers

574
00:36:12,160 --> 00:36:16,040
Speaker 1: on the subjects of electricity and magnetism between seventeen eighty

575
00:36:16,080 --> 00:36:18,040
Speaker 1: five and seventeen ninety one, and he had done a

576
00:36:18,080 --> 00:36:21,719
Speaker 1: lot of work leading up to those publications. Among his

577
00:36:21,840 --> 00:36:25,920
Speaker 1: discoveries was the relationship between the strength of opposite charges

578
00:36:26,400 --> 00:36:29,640
Speaker 1: and that distance between them. He developed what we now

579
00:36:29,680 --> 00:36:33,480
Speaker 1: call Coulomb's law. Now, this law states the electrical or

580
00:36:33,520 --> 00:36:36,640
Speaker 1: magnetic force depends upon the strength and nature of the

581
00:36:36,719 --> 00:36:40,360
Speaker 1: charges of the two objects and the distance between those

582
00:36:40,400 --> 00:36:44,319
Speaker 1: two objects. So, if you have two similarly charged objects,

583
00:36:44,719 --> 00:36:48,120
Speaker 1: like two positives, they repel one another with a non

584
00:36:48,520 --> 00:36:53,600
Speaker 1: contact force. Two opposite charged objects, a negative and a positive,

585
00:36:53,640 --> 00:36:58,000
Speaker 1: will attract one another with a non contact force. These

586
00:36:58,120 --> 00:37:01,120
Speaker 1: forces are vector quantity, which means they have both a

587
00:37:01,239 --> 00:37:04,719
Speaker 1: magnitude and a direction, and the distance between the two

588
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:08,000
Speaker 1: objects affects the amount of force. The closer the objects

589
00:37:08,040 --> 00:37:12,120
Speaker 1: are to one another, the greater the force is between them. Or,

590
00:37:12,160 --> 00:37:15,600
Speaker 1: in other words, that the magnitude of the electrostatic force

591
00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:19,680
Speaker 1: of attraction between two point charges is directly proportional to

592
00:37:19,760 --> 00:37:23,520
Speaker 1: the product of the magnitudes of charges and inversely proportional

593
00:37:23,560 --> 00:37:28,120
Speaker 1: to the square of the distance between them. That's the

594
00:37:28,120 --> 00:37:31,920
Speaker 1: technical description of Coulomb's law. There's also a constant that

595
00:37:31,960 --> 00:37:34,560
Speaker 1: you have to use when you're working with equations. Using

596
00:37:34,560 --> 00:37:37,239
Speaker 1: Culolm's law, but we don't need to really dive into that,

597
00:37:38,400 --> 00:37:42,720
Speaker 1: the point being that he realized that distance definitely plays

598
00:37:42,719 --> 00:37:45,719
Speaker 1: a factor with these other forces that we still didn't

599
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:50,600
Speaker 1: fully understand at that point. Then you have Alessandro Volta,

600
00:37:50,880 --> 00:37:53,600
Speaker 1: from whom we get the word volt He was an

601
00:37:53,640 --> 00:37:56,920
Speaker 1: Italian physicist who became interested in the study of electricity.

602
00:37:57,080 --> 00:38:00,080
Speaker 1: Now we normally credit Volta with the invention of the

603
00:38:00,080 --> 00:38:04,319
Speaker 1: electric battery, those Bagdad batteries set aside. He began by

604
00:38:04,360 --> 00:38:08,240
Speaker 1: building on the work of another physicist named Johann Carl Vilk,

605
00:38:08,719 --> 00:38:13,280
Speaker 1: who had invented the electroforts. The electrofus was a simple

606
00:38:13,360 --> 00:38:16,560
Speaker 1: capacitative generator that could build up an electrostatic charge for

607
00:38:16,680 --> 00:38:21,000
Speaker 1: use and experiments. So all these scientists really wanted to

608
00:38:21,040 --> 00:38:23,320
Speaker 1: study electricity, but to do that you had to build

609
00:38:23,360 --> 00:38:26,319
Speaker 1: up these electrostatic charges so that when you discharged them,

610
00:38:26,320 --> 00:38:28,719
Speaker 1: you had something to study. So this was a guy

611
00:38:28,760 --> 00:38:31,359
Speaker 1: who had developed the electro forest as a way of

612
00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:38,279
Speaker 1: making that easier to do. Volta's buddy Luigi Galvani had

613
00:38:38,320 --> 00:38:41,279
Speaker 1: observed something really unusual himself. He noted that when he

614
00:38:41,400 --> 00:38:44,560
Speaker 1: used two different types of metal to make contact with

615
00:38:44,600 --> 00:38:47,839
Speaker 1: the muscle of a frog, an electric current would pass

616
00:38:47,920 --> 00:38:50,239
Speaker 1: between the two, and so he thought the source of

617
00:38:50,239 --> 00:38:52,879
Speaker 1: the electricity was from the frog itself, and he called

618
00:38:52,920 --> 00:38:56,920
Speaker 1: it animal electricity. Volta disagreed, saying that the frog was

619
00:38:57,040 --> 00:38:59,880
Speaker 1: just a conductor, not the generator, and so he was

620
00:39:00,000 --> 00:39:03,760
Speaker 1: call it metallic electricity. And this was a big debate

621
00:39:04,120 --> 00:39:07,799
Speaker 1: in circles at the time. So in seventeen ninety two,

622
00:39:07,880 --> 00:39:12,120
Speaker 1: Volta began to experiment on metals, often using his own

623
00:39:12,160 --> 00:39:15,440
Speaker 1: tongue as the laboratory. He would put two different discs

624
00:39:15,440 --> 00:39:17,480
Speaker 1: of metal on his tongue and feel the tingling on

625
00:39:17,520 --> 00:39:21,160
Speaker 1: his tongue and say, yep, there's an electric current passing there.

626
00:39:22,560 --> 00:39:24,239
Speaker 1: But he could also use other stuff as well, and

627
00:39:24,280 --> 00:39:26,600
Speaker 1: he was able to observe that in fact, it was

628
00:39:26,640 --> 00:39:31,160
Speaker 1: the metals that were important, not the creature. This also

629
00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:34,360
Speaker 1: inspired Volta to look into electricity further, which culminated with

630
00:39:34,440 --> 00:39:37,719
Speaker 1: the design of the first real battery as far as

631
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:41,319
Speaker 1: modern science is concerned. It was in eighteen hundred that

632
00:39:41,440 --> 00:39:47,040
Speaker 1: Volta invented the voltaic pile, also known as the voltaic column.

633
00:39:47,440 --> 00:39:51,200
Speaker 1: This battery consisted of alternating layers of zinc and silver,

634
00:39:51,760 --> 00:39:55,680
Speaker 1: or of alternating layers of copper and pewter with layers

635
00:39:55,719 --> 00:39:58,880
Speaker 1: of paper or cloth soaked in a salt solution in

636
00:39:58,960 --> 00:40:02,640
Speaker 1: between the different metal discs. This arrangement could create a

637
00:40:02,680 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 1: steady electric current that didn't need recharging like a Leyden

638
00:40:06,200 --> 00:40:09,600
Speaker 1: jar did. So this was a great solution for engineers

639
00:40:09,600 --> 00:40:11,480
Speaker 1: and scientists who wanted to be able to work with

640
00:40:11,520 --> 00:40:14,680
Speaker 1: electricity but didn't want to have to stop every time

641
00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:18,320
Speaker 1: they discharged Leyden jar to build up another electrostatic charge.

642
00:40:18,560 --> 00:40:22,320
Speaker 1: This was a steady source, so it was a huge boon,

643
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:25,480
Speaker 1: although we didn't really have any other practical applications for

644
00:40:25,520 --> 00:40:31,120
Speaker 1: electricity just yet. But six weeks after Volta published his findings,

645
00:40:31,640 --> 00:40:36,920
Speaker 1: English scientists William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle experimented with a

646
00:40:37,000 --> 00:40:40,800
Speaker 1: voltaic pile and electrodes placed in water, and the electric

647
00:40:40,880 --> 00:40:43,640
Speaker 1: current that passed through the water caused the water to

648
00:40:43,719 --> 00:40:49,400
Speaker 1: decompose into hydrogen and oxygen, breaking the molecules of water apart.

649
00:40:49,920 --> 00:40:53,640
Speaker 1: And this is a process that we call electrolysis, specifically

650
00:40:53,640 --> 00:40:57,160
Speaker 1: with water, but with other things as well, using electrical

651
00:40:57,239 --> 00:41:01,000
Speaker 1: charges to break those molecular bonds. By eighteen oh two,

652
00:41:01,680 --> 00:41:06,600
Speaker 1: William Crookshank had designed the first electric battery for mass production,

653
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:09,880
Speaker 1: using copper and zinc in a wooden box filled with

654
00:41:09,920 --> 00:41:14,040
Speaker 1: an electrolyte a brine and sealed to prevent leaking. So

655
00:41:14,080 --> 00:41:17,480
Speaker 1: a big think of a big wooden battery akin to

656
00:41:17,520 --> 00:41:20,960
Speaker 1: something like a car battery, would be like this today.

657
00:41:21,400 --> 00:41:24,520
Speaker 1: So Volta died in eighteen twenty seven, and it was

658
00:41:24,560 --> 00:41:27,200
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty one that the scientific community decided to

659
00:41:27,280 --> 00:41:31,560
Speaker 1: name the unit of electromotive force the vault, after him.

660
00:41:32,040 --> 00:41:34,640
Speaker 1: So he did not live to see his name used

661
00:41:34,760 --> 00:41:39,600
Speaker 1: to describe electromotive force, but he certainly was the inspiration

662
00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:42,839
Speaker 1: for it, and other inventors and scientists would improve upon

663
00:41:42,960 --> 00:41:46,759
Speaker 1: Volta's design, including chemist John F. Daniel and later a

664
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:51,280
Speaker 1: physician from France named Gaston Plante, who designed the first

665
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:56,240
Speaker 1: rechargeable lead acid battery. So Plante's design is the basis

666
00:41:56,239 --> 00:41:58,680
Speaker 1: for modern lead acid batteries today, like the kind you

667
00:41:58,680 --> 00:42:03,160
Speaker 1: would find in internal combustion engine vehicles. That has its

668
00:42:03,239 --> 00:42:07,720
Speaker 1: roots back in the early early to mid nineteenth century.

669
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:10,880
Speaker 1: It's kind of incredible. Later on you would see other

670
00:42:10,920 --> 00:42:13,319
Speaker 1: improvements with battery technology. Might as well stick with that

671
00:42:13,360 --> 00:42:16,840
Speaker 1: for right now. That would include the nickel cadmium battery,

672
00:42:16,880 --> 00:42:20,640
Speaker 1: which was first designed by Valdemar Jungner from Sweden in

673
00:42:20,680 --> 00:42:24,759
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety nine, and the nickel iron battery designed by

674
00:42:24,800 --> 00:42:29,319
Speaker 1: Thomas Edison, or at least Thomas Edison's team of engineers

675
00:42:29,320 --> 00:42:33,680
Speaker 1: and scientists. There's always a caveat whenever you say Thomas

676
00:42:33,840 --> 00:42:36,360
Speaker 1: Edison's invention, because he had a whole lot of people

677
00:42:36,400 --> 00:42:40,799
Speaker 1: working for him who were busy research and developing all

678
00:42:40,840 --> 00:42:44,239
Speaker 1: sorts of different technologies, and Edison's name gets attached to

679
00:42:44,280 --> 00:42:46,799
Speaker 1: a lot of it. Edison himself was a brilliant guy,

680
00:42:48,520 --> 00:42:52,120
Speaker 1: but he largely was brilliant in bringing people to work

681
00:42:52,360 --> 00:42:56,680
Speaker 1: on these cool ideas, sometimes contributing to him directly. Sometimes

682
00:42:56,680 --> 00:43:00,839
Speaker 1: he wasn't, but he was providing the space for that

683
00:43:00,960 --> 00:43:04,960
Speaker 1: kind of work to happen. Anyway. He helped develop the

684
00:43:05,000 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 1: first nickel iron battery in nineteen oh one. But I've

685
00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:11,680
Speaker 1: talked a lot about batteries, So what I'll do in

686
00:43:11,719 --> 00:43:15,279
Speaker 1: the next section is talk about other developments in electricity.

687
00:43:15,520 --> 00:43:17,960
Speaker 1: But before I jump into that, let's take another quick

688
00:43:17,960 --> 00:43:30,080
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. So one of Volta's contemporaries

689
00:43:30,400 --> 00:43:35,880
Speaker 1: was Andre Marie Ampere, and we talk about amps and amperage.

690
00:43:36,080 --> 00:43:40,439
Speaker 1: It comes from ampere, so his name also serves as

691
00:43:40,480 --> 00:43:45,040
Speaker 1: a type of scientific unit, basically one describing current as

692
00:43:45,040 --> 00:43:48,759
Speaker 1: opposed to voltage. Ampierre noted in eighteen twenty that a

693
00:43:48,800 --> 00:43:52,120
Speaker 1: wire carrying an electric current was sometimes attracted to and

694
00:43:52,200 --> 00:43:55,480
Speaker 1: other times repelled by other such wires. So he was

695
00:43:55,520 --> 00:44:01,719
Speaker 1: starting to notice this magnetic attraction along current carrying wires,

696
00:44:02,080 --> 00:44:06,160
Speaker 1: and in eighteen thirty one another fellow, Michael Faraday, explored

697
00:44:06,200 --> 00:44:09,360
Speaker 1: this idea further, and he discovered that if he revolved

698
00:44:09,400 --> 00:44:14,279
Speaker 1: a copper disc inside a strong magnetic field, it would

699
00:44:14,360 --> 00:44:19,120
Speaker 1: generate an electric current inside the copper disc. Faraday and

700
00:44:19,160 --> 00:44:21,840
Speaker 1: a guy named Humphrey Davey would later build an early

701
00:44:22,000 --> 00:44:25,920
Speaker 1: electric generator using this discovery. The generator consisted of a

702
00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:29,160
Speaker 1: coil of copper that would be moved past a magnet,

703
00:44:29,520 --> 00:44:33,560
Speaker 1: and this is the very very rough basic idea for

704
00:44:33,640 --> 00:44:37,600
Speaker 1: electric generators today. Moving a conductor through a magnetic field

705
00:44:37,640 --> 00:44:41,680
Speaker 1: induces electricity to flow through the conductor. That's the simplified version. Now.

706
00:44:41,719 --> 00:44:47,080
Speaker 1: More specifically, the greatest current flows through a conductor when

707
00:44:47,120 --> 00:44:50,360
Speaker 1: the conductor is moving through the most lines of magnetic

708
00:44:50,400 --> 00:44:55,640
Speaker 1: flux at the fastest rate. So magnetic flux is a

709
00:44:55,680 --> 00:45:00,640
Speaker 1: magnetic field passing through a surface. You've probably seen illustrations

710
00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:04,360
Speaker 1: of magnetic fields. Imagine a bar magnet. It's just a

711
00:45:04,400 --> 00:45:07,279
Speaker 1: simple rectangle. You have a north pole of the bar

712
00:45:07,400 --> 00:45:10,279
Speaker 1: magnet and a south pole of the bar magnet. You

713
00:45:10,320 --> 00:45:14,879
Speaker 1: would draw lines extending outward from the north pole. These

714
00:45:14,920 --> 00:45:18,280
Speaker 1: lines would start to loop back down toward the south

715
00:45:18,320 --> 00:45:24,640
Speaker 1: pole in ever increasing but less strong magnetic lines that

716
00:45:24,680 --> 00:45:26,960
Speaker 1: go further out until you get a couple that don't

717
00:45:26,960 --> 00:45:29,400
Speaker 1: even loop back down to the south pole. They just

718
00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:33,960
Speaker 1: go outward. So lines extend out from the north pole

719
00:45:34,120 --> 00:45:37,600
Speaker 1: and go in to the south pole, and you designate

720
00:45:37,640 --> 00:45:40,120
Speaker 1: this by drawing little arrows on the lines to show

721
00:45:40,600 --> 00:45:47,239
Speaker 1: the direction of this, the vector quality of this. At

722
00:45:47,239 --> 00:45:49,560
Speaker 1: the south pole, you've got all those incoming lines, including

723
00:45:49,560 --> 00:45:52,520
Speaker 1: a couple from apparently external sources. When you look at

724
00:45:52,880 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 1: the illustrations of magnetic fields, so if you move a

725
00:45:56,440 --> 00:46:00,520
Speaker 1: conductor through these magnetic fields, it sort of breaks the lines.

726
00:46:00,520 --> 00:46:05,400
Speaker 1: It moves through those lines of magnetic force, and you

727
00:46:05,680 --> 00:46:09,160
Speaker 1: do it quickly, current will flow through the conductor. It

728
00:46:09,239 --> 00:46:13,480
Speaker 1: induces current to flow, and the most current will flow

729
00:46:13,880 --> 00:46:17,800
Speaker 1: when the conductor moves through the ninety degree perpendicular plane

730
00:46:17,880 --> 00:46:21,319
Speaker 1: with respect to the magnetic field. So again, if you've

731
00:46:21,320 --> 00:46:26,399
Speaker 1: got let's imagine that the conductor is a square. We've

732
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:30,080
Speaker 1: got a square of copper. It's not solid copper, it's

733
00:46:30,120 --> 00:46:33,560
Speaker 1: just a copper wire that's been shaped in the form

734
00:46:33,600 --> 00:46:36,560
Speaker 1: of a square. It's got two prongs at the base

735
00:46:36,600 --> 00:46:38,840
Speaker 1: of it that go down to where there's a crank,

736
00:46:39,600 --> 00:46:41,880
Speaker 1: so I can turn the crank and this will rotate

737
00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:45,080
Speaker 1: the square. Right now, let's say to either side of

738
00:46:45,080 --> 00:46:49,080
Speaker 1: the square, I put two very powerful magnets. One of

739
00:46:49,120 --> 00:46:52,880
Speaker 1: them has the north pole facing into the gap, the

740
00:46:52,920 --> 00:46:56,160
Speaker 1: other one has its south pole facing into the gap.

741
00:46:56,520 --> 00:46:59,480
Speaker 1: The squares in the center in between these two magnets.

742
00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:04,360
Speaker 1: When I turn the square so that it is perpendicular

743
00:47:04,800 --> 00:47:09,040
Speaker 1: to the magnetic field extending out from these magnets, that

744
00:47:09,239 --> 00:47:11,640
Speaker 1: is the moment when it's going to have the most

745
00:47:11,719 --> 00:47:15,160
Speaker 1: current flowing through the square as it moves. It has

746
00:47:15,200 --> 00:47:19,040
Speaker 1: to be moving for this to really work. When you

747
00:47:19,080 --> 00:47:23,160
Speaker 1: get it parallel with the magnetic fields, you will have

748
00:47:23,440 --> 00:47:26,719
Speaker 1: the least amount of current. In fact, you have no

749
00:47:26,800 --> 00:47:30,160
Speaker 1: current at all flowing through it at that moment. If

750
00:47:30,200 --> 00:47:32,759
Speaker 1: you keep it turning. Then you will be able to

751
00:47:32,840 --> 00:47:41,560
Speaker 1: generate current fairly consistently. It does actually pulse, it's not steady.

752
00:47:42,080 --> 00:47:43,720
Speaker 1: If you were to measure it out, you would actually

753
00:47:43,719 --> 00:47:46,160
Speaker 1: see it pulsing. And not only does it pulse, the

754
00:47:46,239 --> 00:47:52,520
Speaker 1: direction of current will change, so it's actually alternating current.

755
00:47:53,480 --> 00:47:55,719
Speaker 1: But we'll talk about that again in a little bit

756
00:47:55,840 --> 00:47:58,759
Speaker 1: more a little bit later. To really get into alternating

757
00:47:58,760 --> 00:48:01,640
Speaker 1: current was in eighteen thirty two there was a French

758
00:48:01,680 --> 00:48:10,240
Speaker 1: inventor named Pixie PIXII Hippolyte Pixie or Hippolyta if you prefer,

759
00:48:11,239 --> 00:48:15,120
Speaker 1: But he built an electrical generator based off of Faraday's

760
00:48:15,160 --> 00:48:17,799
Speaker 1: discoveries that was very similar to what I just described.

761
00:48:17,840 --> 00:48:21,000
Speaker 1: It had these permanent magnets that had a rotating conductor

762
00:48:21,640 --> 00:48:24,560
Speaker 1: that would actually really had a spinning magnet and a

763
00:48:24,560 --> 00:48:28,840
Speaker 1: steady conductor. But same principle, right, you've got a spinning

764
00:48:28,880 --> 00:48:32,279
Speaker 1: magnet and a steady conductor. You could rearrange that as

765
00:48:32,280 --> 00:48:35,120
Speaker 1: a spinning conductor and a steady magnet, doesn't really matter.

766
00:48:36,560 --> 00:48:39,279
Speaker 1: He found that the current's direction changed each time the

767
00:48:39,320 --> 00:48:42,279
Speaker 1: north pole passed over the coil after the south pole

768
00:48:42,280 --> 00:48:44,360
Speaker 1: had passed over the coil, and this was an early

769
00:48:44,440 --> 00:48:48,360
Speaker 1: alternating current generator, but there was no real use for

770
00:48:48,440 --> 00:48:51,840
Speaker 1: alternating current at that time, so AMPI advised Pixie to

771
00:48:52,280 --> 00:48:55,520
Speaker 1: design a generator with a device known as a commutator.

772
00:48:56,360 --> 00:49:00,560
Speaker 1: Commutators are meant to change alternating current to direct current.

773
00:49:00,680 --> 00:49:04,360
Speaker 1: So the difference between alternating current and direct current is

774
00:49:04,440 --> 00:49:09,279
Speaker 1: alternating current changes the direction of the current. So you'll

775
00:49:09,280 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 1: have electrons flowing through a circuit in one direction and

776
00:49:12,640 --> 00:49:16,840
Speaker 1: then they will reverse and flow into the other direction

777
00:49:17,440 --> 00:49:23,440
Speaker 1: with alternating current, and they do this many times every second.

778
00:49:23,600 --> 00:49:26,760
Speaker 1: Then you have direct current where the direction of flow

779
00:49:27,000 --> 00:49:30,759
Speaker 1: is always the same. It goes from if you're doing

780
00:49:30,760 --> 00:49:34,000
Speaker 1: the conventional flow diagram, it goes from the positive terminal

781
00:49:34,040 --> 00:49:36,920
Speaker 1: to the negative terminal, and it's never going to change.

782
00:49:37,640 --> 00:49:40,520
Speaker 1: It's always going to follow that. Batteries give off direct current.

783
00:49:41,280 --> 00:49:44,280
Speaker 1: Power plants that use AC generators give off AC current,

784
00:49:44,280 --> 00:49:46,960
Speaker 1: and I'll talk more about that in part two. But

785
00:49:47,160 --> 00:49:50,399
Speaker 1: why do generators create alternating current and how do commutators work? Well,

786
00:49:50,520 --> 00:49:53,440
Speaker 1: remember that example I just gave. You've got this square

787
00:49:53,680 --> 00:50:00,000
Speaker 1: rotating conductor copper wire. It's in between the two magnets.

788
00:50:00,120 --> 00:50:03,000
Speaker 1: Say that you've got your square position between the south

789
00:50:03,000 --> 00:50:05,160
Speaker 1: pole of one magnet the north pole of the other magnet,

790
00:50:05,360 --> 00:50:07,640
Speaker 1: And at the moment you're holding the square steady between

791
00:50:07,680 --> 00:50:11,160
Speaker 1: the two magnets, and you put a piece of blue

792
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:15,080
Speaker 1: tape on the side that's facing magnet number one, which

793
00:50:15,080 --> 00:50:17,520
Speaker 1: has the south pole facing into the gap, and you

794
00:50:17,560 --> 00:50:20,680
Speaker 1: put a piece of red tape on the side facing

795
00:50:20,719 --> 00:50:23,840
Speaker 1: magnet two, which is the north pole of the other magnet.

796
00:50:23,840 --> 00:50:26,800
Speaker 1: And then you rotate the square so that it moves

797
00:50:27,600 --> 00:50:31,200
Speaker 1: down or back with respect to magnet one, and up

798
00:50:31,320 --> 00:50:34,839
Speaker 1: or forward with respect to magnet two. So if you're

799
00:50:35,120 --> 00:50:37,239
Speaker 1: staring at this, you see that blue tape start to

800
00:50:37,239 --> 00:50:43,000
Speaker 1: move down. Let's say that we've got this horizontally aligned.

801
00:50:44,360 --> 00:50:47,000
Speaker 1: It appears to move down with respect to the magnets.

802
00:50:47,200 --> 00:50:49,880
Speaker 1: The red tape moves up with respect to the magnets,

803
00:50:50,320 --> 00:50:52,399
Speaker 1: and as it does this, it induces current to flow

804
00:50:52,400 --> 00:50:55,239
Speaker 1: in one direction in the copper wire. But once the

805
00:50:55,320 --> 00:50:59,680
Speaker 1: square hits that parallel position with the magnetic fields and

806
00:50:59,719 --> 00:51:03,200
Speaker 1: then continues its turn, the side that was going up

807
00:51:03,280 --> 00:51:05,640
Speaker 1: is now going down through a magnetic field, and the

808
00:51:05,680 --> 00:51:07,759
Speaker 1: side that was going down through a magnetic field is

809
00:51:07,800 --> 00:51:10,399
Speaker 1: now going up through a magnetic field. So the red

810
00:51:10,400 --> 00:51:13,479
Speaker 1: tape takes this turn starts moving downward. The red blue

811
00:51:13,520 --> 00:51:15,680
Speaker 1: tape is making its turn and moving upward, and at

812
00:51:15,680 --> 00:51:19,600
Speaker 1: that moment, when the conductor breaks that parallel plane, the

813
00:51:19,680 --> 00:51:24,080
Speaker 1: current reverses direction. Turning the conductor quickly will induce more

814
00:51:24,080 --> 00:51:27,080
Speaker 1: current to flow and increase the number of cycles the

815
00:51:27,160 --> 00:51:31,480
Speaker 1: current flow reverses per given unit of time. Now, as

816
00:51:31,520 --> 00:51:34,560
Speaker 1: I said, this is alternating current, but the early experiments

817
00:51:34,560 --> 00:51:36,960
Speaker 1: for the day, they really need a direct current, not

818
00:51:37,000 --> 00:51:39,359
Speaker 1: alternating current, which means you have to find a way

819
00:51:39,400 --> 00:51:42,080
Speaker 1: to make the current flow stable in a single direction,

820
00:51:42,440 --> 00:51:45,920
Speaker 1: and that's where a commutator comes in. A simple commutator

821
00:51:46,000 --> 00:51:49,320
Speaker 1: is a split ring where the two sides of the

822
00:51:49,400 --> 00:51:51,959
Speaker 1: ring are made up of a conductive material, but they're

823
00:51:52,040 --> 00:51:55,879
Speaker 1: insulated from each other with an insulating material in between them.

824
00:51:57,200 --> 00:52:01,399
Speaker 1: So imagine a ring that has one tiny sliver cut

825
00:52:01,400 --> 00:52:04,200
Speaker 1: out of the ring, so it's like two halves of

826
00:52:04,239 --> 00:52:07,160
Speaker 1: a ring, and then you have an insulator in between

827
00:52:07,200 --> 00:52:12,160
Speaker 1: the two halves. On either side of this split ring,

828
00:52:12,640 --> 00:52:16,360
Speaker 1: you have elements that we call brushes. These are just

829
00:52:16,719 --> 00:52:21,640
Speaker 1: conductive materials that are stationary contacts. They make contact with

830
00:52:21,840 --> 00:52:26,759
Speaker 1: this rotating split ring. So as the conductor turns, so

831
00:52:26,840 --> 00:52:29,160
Speaker 1: does the split ring, and while the direction of current

832
00:52:29,320 --> 00:52:32,439
Speaker 1: changes within the conductor, the nature of the split ring

833
00:52:32,520 --> 00:52:35,920
Speaker 1: makes the flow of current and the overall circuit unidirectional.

834
00:52:36,520 --> 00:52:39,239
Speaker 1: Now I realize this is really difficult to visualize without help,

835
00:52:39,320 --> 00:52:42,239
Speaker 1: so I actually recommend that you go look up videos

836
00:52:42,280 --> 00:52:46,040
Speaker 1: about DC generators to get a better idea of what

837
00:52:46,080 --> 00:52:49,840
Speaker 1: I'm talking about, because a DC generator at its most

838
00:52:49,840 --> 00:52:53,959
Speaker 1: basic level is really an AC generator with a commutator

839
00:52:54,080 --> 00:52:57,040
Speaker 1: attached to it. The important thing to note is that

840
00:52:57,719 --> 00:53:01,200
Speaker 1: the basic generator makes altrain current and the commutator makes

841
00:53:01,200 --> 00:53:05,040
Speaker 1: it into direct current. Now, at this stage, electricity was

842
00:53:05,080 --> 00:53:08,799
Speaker 1: still something scientists and engineers would experiment with. They still

843
00:53:08,840 --> 00:53:12,000
Speaker 1: didn't have any real practical uses for electricity right now,

844
00:53:12,040 --> 00:53:14,879
Speaker 1: not on a massive scale at any rate. But over

845
00:53:14,920 --> 00:53:18,000
Speaker 1: the course of the nineteenth century it became clear that

846
00:53:18,080 --> 00:53:22,200
Speaker 1: electricity had the potential. It's another electricity pun for you

847
00:53:22,560 --> 00:53:26,280
Speaker 1: to change the world. I hope you enjoyed that classic

848
00:53:26,320 --> 00:53:29,600
Speaker 1: episode of tech Stuff from June twenty eighth, twenty seventeen.

849
00:53:29,719 --> 00:53:33,640
Speaker 1: Next week we will obviously have Part two, the conclusion

850
00:53:33,960 --> 00:53:36,560
Speaker 1: of this two part series on the history of electricity.

851
00:53:37,040 --> 00:53:39,319
Speaker 1: Until then, I hope you are all well, and I'll

852
00:53:39,360 --> 00:53:48,200
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. Tech Stuff is an

853
00:53:48,239 --> 00:53:53,760
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio production. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

854
00:53:53,880 --> 00:53:57,040
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

855
00:54:00,040 --> 00:54:00,080
Speaker 1: No