Electricity and Magnetism

Martinus van Marum's machine: Martinus van Marum, a Dutch physician, developed an interest in the physical sciences and was...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Giant Van de Graaff: The world’s largest Van de Graaff generator is housed in Boston’s Museum of Science and has two 4.5 m...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

John Trump, the uncle of US president Donald J. Trump, worked as one of Van de Graaff’s assistants. Trump went on to develop a...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

A curious dispute between Benjamin Franklin and King George III over the shape of lightning conductors demonstrates the...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

During the eighteenth century, a craze for electrical demonstrations sprang up and itinerant lecturers toured fashionable...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Electrical Bovril: Bovril has an unexpected electrical connection.

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Otto von Guericke developed a demonstration to make his case that the attractive force of the Earth was not gravitational in...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Battery bounce: The anecdotal observation that alkaline batteries that are low on charge bounce higher than fully charged ones...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Electric extinguishers: It is not uncommon for a user to receive a small shock when they touch a grounded conductor after...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

In the 1970s, electrostatically generated sparks caused a number of explosions at grain elevators, large facilities designed...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

A 1966 report in The Journal of the American Society of Anesthesiologists described a case of an explosion caused by an...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

The use of the symbol "I" for current arises from a historical French term. In the 1820s, André-Marie Ampère labelled the flow...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16