Benny Franklin: The Dude With the Key and the Kite by elor5810 elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c A Famous Physicist (among other things) en-us 2018-04-17 00:54:17 UTC 2018-04-17 03:07:52 UTC hello@padlet.com https://padlet-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/icons/Bigthunderstorm.png elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252382883 Ben Franklin is one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He is also a renowned writer, printer, politician, inventor, and scientist. 
Franklin is credited to being one of the first American Physicists, who changed the way electricity was perceived in the world. ]]> 2018-04-17 01:12:24 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252382883 elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252387326 Ben was born January 17, 1706 in Boston. He was the youngest of Josiah Franklin's 15 children, who was a soap maker from England. ]]> 2018-04-17 01:40:05 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252387326 Early Life elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252387473 2018-04-17 01:40:53 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252387473 elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252387547 Despite his success at Boston Latin School, he quit his formal schooling when he was 10 to work at his father's soap and candle shop. Still, he was completely infatuated with reading and learning in any capacity that he could.
When he turned 12, Ben worked as a printer for his older brother James, who totally mistreated him and was a royal jerk.]]> 2018-04-17 01:41:29 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252387547 Moving On elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252391310 When Franklin was 17, he fled from his home to escape his brother (he never returned home).
Ben hopped around for a while, living in New York, Philadelphia, and London, before settling back in Philly. He picked up various jobs along the years, but settled back into the printing industry when he settled. ]]> 2018-04-17 02:02:10 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252391310 Odds and Ends elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252392940 Benny did a whole bunch of random things. These include 
  •  Establishing the first lending library.
  • Owning a bunch of newspapers.
  • Being the Grand Master of the Free Masons
  • Writing a book about meteorology called "Poor Richard's Almanac".
  •  Mapping out the first chart of the Gulf Stream.
  • fighting in wars.
  • A whole bunch of politics (which included being commissioner to Canada, and drafting the declaration of Independence in 1776). 
  • Inventing things like bifocals, flexible catheters (for his brother John who has kidney stones), an instrument called the armonica, the odometermore efficient stoves, and refrigerators.
He even spent 9 years in Paris, as an ambassador, just dating women and being adored by French people. 
]]> 2018-04-17 02:06:31 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252392940 elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252395141 Benjamin's most famous scientific study and experiments involved electricity. ]]> 2018-04-17 02:18:36 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252395141 elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252395514 His contributions to physics influenced and created foundation to Nikola Tesla's and Thomas Edison's works. ]]> 2018-04-17 02:20:50 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252395514 elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252397356 the armonica (Mozart and Beethoven wrote a bunch of music with this thing)]]> 2018-04-17 02:30:16 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252397356 Law of Conservation of Charge elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252397900 One of his biggest discoveries was that the generation of a positive charge is accompanied by the generation of an equal negative charge. He found that electricity cannot be created or removed, only stored. ]]> 2018-04-17 02:33:10 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252397900 Single-Fluid Theory elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252398305 He disproved the standing theory that electricity involved two different "fluids", and was comprised only of one. To explain his theory, he establishedthe idea of 'positive' and 'negative' electrical charges.]]> 2018-04-17 02:35:33 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252398305 elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252398918 he invented the first battery, which was made by grouping a bunch of leyden jars together]]> 2018-04-17 02:38:37 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252398918 Key and the Kite elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252399102 He invented the Lightning Rod. 
He proposed that lightning was a form of electricity, so he conducted an experiment. Using a silk kite with a sharp wire attached to the top and a metal key suspended near the end of the string, he was able to draw off sparks from a passing storm cloud. Remarkably, he didn't die. ]]> 2018-04-17 02:39:45 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252399102 Influences elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252399777 Though there is no specific record, popular scientific influences at the time included Voltaire, Cotton Mather, David Hume, and Emer de Vattel. ]]> 2018-04-17 02:43:54 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252399777 Contemporaries elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252400465 It's unclear of Benny's connection to most of these fellow scientists, but here's who was doing science (mostly physics) at the same time:
  • Sir Isaac Newton 
  • Ewald Jürgen Georg von Kleist (leyden jar)
  • Henry Cavendish (English physicist and chemist; discovered hydrogen and nitric acid)
  •  Charles Augustin de Coulomb (French physicist who discovered the law of force between two charged bodies, and also Coulomb's law)
]]> 2018-04-17 02:48:19 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252400465 elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252402643 APS Physics. (n.d). Benjamin Franklin. Retrieved from https://www.aps.org/programs/outreach/history/historicsites/franklin.cfm]]> 2018-04-17 03:03:24 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252402643 elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252402991 Stories from American History. (June 7 2014). Benjamin Franklin and Electricity. Retrieved from https://studiesinamericanhistory.wordpress.com/2012/06/07/benjamin-franklin-and-electricity/]]> 2018-04-17 03:05:24 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252402991 elor5810 https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252403183 Fromm, James. R. (Feb 2004). Famous Scientists. Retrieved from http://www.3rd1000.com/history.htm]]> 2018-04-17 03:07:01 UTC https://padlet.com/elor5810/8lsse9h29m7c/wish/252403183