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

Ampère’s father was a follower of Jean-Jacques Rosseau’s model of education whereby students learn from nature rather than...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Ampère’s life was marred by tragedy – his father was guillotined for being on the wrong side of the French Revolution and his...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

One of the first estimates of the speed of travel of electrical currents was made from a bizarre experiment carried out by the...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Italian physicist Luigi Galvani’s experiments with frogs’ legs, which demonstrated the link between electrical current and the...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Intriguing factors that affect the severity of electric shocks in humans.

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Johann Ritter is perhaps best known for his discovery, in 1801, of the rays that subsequently became known as ultraviolet...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

At the end of the 19th century in the United States, two systems of power transmission competed for business – a battle that...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

The positive and negative model for electricity that we use today wasn't always the accepted model. In the 18th century, many...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Though his experiment with a kite in a thunderstorm is well known, Benjamin Franklin put electricity to some other strange...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

Benjamin Franklin proposed a number of electrical pranks from drinking glasses designed to give the drinker a sock to a fake...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16

In 1778, the German physicist Georg Christoph Lichtenberg built a large electrophorus, a capacitor-like device charged by...

Stories from Physics 11-14 14-16