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Re: Ben's Kite Experiment



Hello, y'all,
When Ben Franklin conducted his Kite Experiment, he was lucky to have
not been electrocuted. Two Frenchmen who repeated his experiment were not
so lucky. Supposedly, Ben used a key and had little sparks jump between his
knuckle and key, besides doing other tests. Would you say he was sparked by
the effects of polarization or the actual flow of charge collected by his
kite and passing to ground? It seems obvious the Frenchmen were conduits of
current flow rather than polar bears.
Thanks.
Tom McCarthy

Ben, as I understand it, stood under cover so that he and the string in his
hand was dry. I seem to recall he may have had someone else do it
(possibly his son with whom he was later estranged over politics during the
Revolution.) I also doubt that lightning actually struck the kite or
string in Ben's experiment. The Frenchmen stood in the rain and lightning
struck them or the kite.

Dewey

(Please note the new exchange "426" in the phone numbers.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)426-3105
Professor of Physics Dept: (208)426-3775
Department of Physics/MCF421/418 Fax: (208)426-4330
Boise State University dykstrad@bsumail.idbsu.edu
1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders
Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper: GHB, Uilleann

"Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and
are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external
world."--A. Einstein in The Evolution of Physics with L. Infeld,
1938.
"Every [person's] world picture is and always remains a construct
of [their] mind and cannot be proved to have any other existence."
--E. Schrodinger in Mind and Matter, 1958.
"Don't mistake your watermelon for the universe." --K. Amdahl in
There Are No Electrons, 1991.
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