Sept. 22, 1791: Faraday Enters a World He Will Change
- By Randy Alfred
- September 22, 2010 |
- 7:00 am |
- Categories: 18th century, Discoveries, Physics
1791: Michael Faraday is born. In his 76 years on the planet, the chemist-physicist will make fundamental contributions to our understanding of electricity and magnetism, advise governments and establish lasting institutions of scientific education.
Faraday came from a working-class family and had to go to work after rudimentary schooling in reading, writing and arithmetic. But genius won out.
Faraday became a bookbinder’s apprentice in his teens and continued his education by reading the books he was binding. An article on electricity in the Encyclopedia Britannica inspired him to buy some equipment and conduct experiments himself.
Faraday joined London’s City Philosophical Society in 1810 to hear the lectures there and participate in scientific discussions. Then, in 1812, a client of the bookbindery gave the earnest young man tickets to hear a series of lectures by pioneering chemist Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution.
Thirsty for knowledge, Faraday took copious notes. He organized them, added illustrations and bound them into a book. Faraday secured an interview with Davy, presented him with the bound copy and asked to be hired as a lab assistant.
Davy was impressed but had nothing open at the moment. True to his word, however, he did hire Faraday the next year … at about $10 a week (the rough equivalent of $140 in today’s money).
A few years later, Davy asked his assistant to follow up on the work of Danish scientist Hans Christian Oersted, who had just discovered that an electrical current would deflect the needle of a magnetic compass. Faraday theorized that magnets created force fields, and he designed an experiment that significantly one-upped Oersted in 1821.
Faraday suspended a wire above a magnet. When he passed a current through the wire (whose bottom end hung in a dish of conductive mercury), the wire rotated around the magnet, following lines of magnetic force. It was a prototype for the electric motor, using electricity to create motion. It just needed to be scaled up.
The discovery was a sensation — perhaps a little too much of one. Davy, a scientific rock star of his day, was envious. He accused Faraday of stealing the idea from him and tried to block the young man’s election to the Royal Society. Davy backed off but never withdrew the charges. Faraday became a Fellow of the Royal Society and lab director at the Royal Institution in 1825.
Faraday decided to tread gingerly and shied away from electrical experimentation. He worked instead on analytical chemistry and the compression of gases, discovering benzene in 1825.
Davy died in 1829, perhaps from the after-effects of his frequent inhalation of nitrous oxide and other gases, including carbon monoxide. That gave Faraday free rein to resume his work on electricity.
He discovered electromagnetic induction in 1831. Reversing his effect of using a magnet and electricity to create motion, he used a magnet and motion to generate electricity. No messy, voltaic cells needed, it was the progenitor of steam, hydro and diesel generators.
Faraday plumbed the mysteries of electrochemistry in the 1830s, coining such words as electrode and ion, and establishing the laws of electrolysis.
But wait, there’s more.
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