Electric Current
Electricity and Magnetism
… and shocking pranks
Stories from Physics
for 11-14
14-16
Franklin proposed a number of electrical pranks:
- Drinking glasses were covered in a tin coating to give an unsuspecting drinker a shock.
- A gentleman and a lady were asked to stand on wax insulators. One of the two would be passed an electric phial (or Leyden jar), while the other grasped a wire attached to the phial. The two protagonists would then be asked to move their lips together in order to experience an “electric kiss”.
- A fake spider, constructed from cork, thread and pieces of lead, was animated by being charged so that it appeared “perfectly alive to persons unacquainted”.
References
J. Sparks, The Works of Benjamin Franklin: Containing Several Political and Historical Tracts, Boston: Hilliard, Gray and Company, 1840, p. 187, pp. 255-257
E. Wright (Ed.), Benjamin Franklin. His Life as He Wrote It, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1989, p. 117
