I love your question! The ancients did simple electrical experiments by rubbing wool on glass rods, if I recall correctly. I don't know what theories they came up with, though.

Hi Simon, I am glad you are enjoying them.

I can be remember discovering the concept of hole flow and being really impressed by semiconductors. I agree with you. It's the physicists that broke with Franklin's established charge convention, not the other way around!

The short answer is that JJ Thomson discovered the electron in 1897 but, of course, it took a few years to demonstrate that electricity is mostly just the flow of electrons. I have a video about Thomson if you are interested in *why* he made his discovery.

Here is a link to my Thomson video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/pJmTapp0kpydp5s.html

You are welcome

so glad you liked it

Actually, all very thin metals will have high resistance and therefore will glow and little gaps in the material will cause sparks. That is why the filament in filament light bulbs glow. He used gold because it is easy to flatten and make very thin.

It’s very confusing to talk about current as electron flow is opposite of current as Franklin mistakenly thought positive charges move. But, yes, in a battery either electrons move from the positive to the negative inside the battery (acid batteries) or positive ions move from the negative to the positive (base/alkaline batteries). You could say the current flows inside the battery but electricians do not say it that way. This video I made about batteries work might help it make more sense: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/kL1iiNemueCupqs.html

Aww thanks

Loomis first published on that in 1865. "Popular Electronics" had a piece on it in its 100th anniversary year, after Congress had commemorated his patent. His original apparatus had a spark gap, not a galvanometer. He had later work with a galvanometer at the receiver, but there is reason to be suspicious of that, as the spark gap would've been needed for its capacitance. What really taps a *lot* of atmospheric charge is a helicopter, with its big rotor sweeping thru a lot of atmosphere. That's why if you ever see someone being rescued by climbing a ladder into a hovering helicopter, it had better have dropped a grounding wire first! Most reports I've seen on Franklin's experiment say that it was done as a cold front approached, and that he reeled in the kite before the storm got there. Even if the kite wire was equilibrated by slow leakage to ground during the period the kite was initially put up, there is a charge gradient in the approach of a cold front, and an excess of cations in the air. The passage of the front, with or without a storm or visible discharges, changes the excess to one of anions. This effect has been hypothesized to contribute to feelings of depression and then of elation. However, experiments on ionizing the air to produce effects on mood have been notoriously hard to get reproducible results from. I tend to choke up about all this because I can't help thinking about Georg Richmann's death, as memorialized in that famous woodcut.

@@goodmaro Loomis experiment is fully consistent with radio physics. First, the antenna length and the counterpoise length at receiver and transmitter was identical. The counterpoise was coiled around the station. That's your resonant circuit. The spark gap was the morse code key. It sparked as it was opened and closed. Tank circuits make the transmitter narrower band and the receiver more selective but they are not essential to RF as specific components. Loomis only was able to send messages for a few miles, no more than telegraph wires of his day. So you are right in the sense that he didn't produce anything of much practical benefit. Geoff/W1GCF

Who was your ancestor, Benjamin Franklin?

Franklin assume that since brushes brush up dirt they must brush up electric charge. When a brush rubbed against a piece of glass he called the brush getting positive charge and the glass cut negative charge but it turns out when a brush rubs against glass the glass gains electrons in the brush loses it, therefore according to Franklin the electron is negative

James Lanbro this one is episode 5: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/fNJ2i7d13s_diWg.html

Kathy Loves Physics & History it’s missing in your playlist, which has two different ep6, with the same content but different thumbnails.

Proverbios 9:10 well, Franklin assumed that since brushes up dirt it must also brush up charge. Oops.

Franklin guessed wrong about the direction of flow, but whoever later came along and arbitrarily called electrons negative (which we are now stuck with) screwed up worse it seems.

@@smith0426 Yes I always thought there was something wrong.

They didn’t arbitrarily call electrons negative, they called electrons negative because if you recreate Franklins experiment, then the glass gets more electrons, and Franklin called that negative.

If electrons had been positive, then they would be attracted to the highest, positive, voltage, and while a positive will repulse another positive (same charge), a positive will also be attracted by the positive (voltage). Even more confusing since it attracts and repulse.

@@snnwstt It's all relative.

@@kurtpena5462 Except history. After two hundred years of calling one sort of charge positive, we would have had to throw out all previous descriptions of electricity if we wanted to call that charge negative.

So, I made a video about Bose here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iJZmdrqk37-4lqs.html If you want to read about him you can read a lot in a book called "Electricity in the 17th and 18th Century" by Heilbron or the wikipedia site for Georg Matthias Bose (which needs more about how he invented the static electricity machine IMHO). Hope that helps and glad you liked it.

So, Franklin made a machine that used a brush to rub against a spinning glass. if a person touched both the brush and the glass, they wouldn't get charged, but if one person touched the brush and another touched the glass they would both get charged and could give each other a big shock after which they would be discharged. For that reason, Franklin decided that the brush was just moving the charges away from the glass. As he knew brushes move dirt, he assumed that the brush collected charge which he called positive. However, it turns out that the glass collects electrons so... he got the direction of flow wrong.

@@Kathy_Loves_Physics That's interesting! I never knew that brushes-collect-dirt reasoning. I'd always just assumed he had a 50-50 chance, not that he had a reason for assigning one.

Video #6 had really bad sound so I fixed it and reposted it so it ended up out of order. So sorry: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/iJZmdrqk37-4lqs.html

And here is video #7 kzfaq.info/get/bejne/orRjoquKmMvPg30.html

Thank you so much for the videos 6 & 7 cause i wanted to watch everything in order .. i have a proposition make a playlist in your channel with all videos in order .. it will be easier to watch .. but anyway thank you so much 🙏

Saad Saghir that is a fantastic idea. Will do. Also, at the end of the video there is usually a link to the next one btw. But I think those are the only two out of order.

You so kind , i hope you continue making more great videos like these .. thank you

ghost Unix energy is conserved it doesn’t dissolve (although it can change into mass so a better statement is energy/mass is conserved). But yes electricity is a form of energy.

@@Kathy_Loves_Physics What I was trying to say that is that heat/electic energy are are some of the simplest and abundant forms of energy which thousands of watts/BTU are coming from the sun every day but that energy is is naturally spreading out to lots of small forces and must be condensed to harness.

@@Kathy_Loves_Physics ELECTRICITY IS NOT A FORM OF ENERGY amasci.com/miscon/energ1.html

Benjamin Franklin knew that there were glass and resin electricity. He concluded correctly that they were opposites. He defined the glass electricity as positive and resin electricity as negative and electricity flows positive to negative. He could have done it the other way which would have made things easier in the future. Remember Franklin could not know anything about electrons. When electrons were 150 years later discovered they were found out to be negative. People were so used to the notion of electricity flowing positive to negative so it was too late to change it.

Technically the "north" pole of any magnet other than the Earth itself is called the "north-seeking" pole. So if the Earth were represented as a bar magnet, it would be with its "south-seeking" pole in the north.

@@okaro6595 Until we got to electronics, it never mattered that the more mobile charge was the negative one. As long as we dealt with currents only in solid conductors and electrolytes, conventional current was just as serviceable. It was the empiric inclusion of a positive-biased electrode in an evacuated Edison incandescent bulb to reduce the accumulation of black schmutz on the inside of the glass where people first had a reason to care which charged particle was the more mobile. Leading to the Rutherford atom, etc.

charles date so glad you liked it

OK good to see she’s watching something educational. My daughter must have been using my account

Are you trolling? Please avoid smileys if you are serious. If there is more electrons it is negative.

Think algebraically.

Alfonso Medina Did you watch the video or are you just complaining about the title?