One of the first to try to show electricity was Benjamin Franklin. Around 1750, he famously performed an experiment to prove that lightning was "electric fire." Contrary to popular and widely held belief, lightning did not strike the kite, which was lucky for Mr. Franklin. If it had, it would not have worked. Obviously, this experiment should not be repeated. However, it is useful to examine what did happen in his experiment.
Franklin did fly a kite with a metal key attached during a thunderstorm. But the key was attached to a Leyden jar, that is a device for storing electricity. Franklin wanted to show that electricity could be "drained" from the air during a thunderstorm and stored in the jar.
Using the electricity stored in the
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His vitreous fluid corresponds to what we now call positive charge, and the resinous fluid is now termed negative charge.
Charge Carriers
More than one hundred years after the work of Benjamin Franklin, the secrets of the atom itself began to be revealed. Moreover, in 1897, J.J. Thomson discovered the electron. Soon after, it was determined that these charged particles existed in all atoms and that a countercharge, carried by some other part of the atom, was necessary to make the overall charge of the atom neutral. In time, the proton was determined to carry this charge. Electrons were assigned the negative charge and the protons are assigned the positive charge. Although electrons carry the same amount of charge as a proton, they are much, much smaller furthermore they are in orbit around the nucleus, rather than in the nucleus itself.
Experiments show that electrons that are orbiting very close to its nucleus is tightly held there by the strong positive charge flowing out of the center of the atom. However, electrons in outer orbits can sometimes be removed by frictional processes such as rubbing.
Charged atoms. If electrons are removed from an atom, that atom becomes positively