Who was the first to use electricity? Who invented electricity and in what year: the history of discovery. Law of Charge Interaction

Nowadays, life without electricity will simply stop. However, this was not always the case - people had never heard such a word before. Over the centuries, thanks to the efforts of generations of talented scientists and researchers, humanity has moved towards the discovery and use of this wonderful natural phenomenon. The development of electric current can easily be considered one of the main achievements of mankind.

Discovery of electricity: first steps

There is no exact answer to the question of when electricity appeared. As a natural force, it has always existed, but the long journey to the invention and use of electricity began back in the 8th century BC. History has even preserved the name of the person who gave the name to this phenomenon. The philosopher Thales of Millet, who lived in Ancient Greece, drew attention to the fact that amber rubbed with wool can attract small objects to itself due to some kind of force. "Amber" in Greek means "electron", which is where "electricity" comes from.

The history of electricity dates the real origin of research in this area to the mid-17th century, and it is associated with the name of the burgomaster from the German Magdeburg Otto f. Guericke (part-time physicist and inventor). In 1663, after studying the works of Thales, he created a special machine to study the effects of electrical attraction and repulsion; this was the world's first electrical mechanism. The apparatus consisted of a sulfur ball that spun on a metal rod and, like amber, attracted and repelled various objects.

Among the pioneers who contributed to the appearance of electricity in our lives, one can name the Englishman W. Gilbert, who served as a physicist and physician at court. He is considered the founder of electrical engineering (the science of the properties and applications of electricity), invented the electroscope and made several remarkable discoveries in this field.

New discoveries

In 1729, the Englishmen Stephen Gray and Granville Wheeler first discovered that electric current passes freely through some bodies (called conductors) and does not pass through others (non-conductors), this was the first step towards the use of electricity for industrial purposes.

In England, for the first time in the world, they are trying to transmit electricity over some distance, the scientist S. Gray was engaged in this; in the process of experiments, he also encountered varying degrees of conductivity of bodies.

Dutch mathematics professor P. van Musschenbroek is called the one who invented the first capacitor for electricity - this is the famous “Leyden jar” (named after the inventor’s hometown). The device was an ordinary glass jar, sealed at both ends with thin sheets of tin-lead alloy. Thus, it becomes possible to accumulate electricity.

The famous American politician Benjamin Franklin was also among those who discovered electricity for widespread use in life. He experimentally determined that electric charges are divided into positive and negative, and also studied the electrical nature of lightning.

Based on Franklin's discoveries in Russia, scientists Richman and the great Mikhailo Vasilyevich Lomonosov invented a lightning rod, proving in practice that lightning is produced from the potential difference in atmospheric electricity. Lomonosov in general had a huge influence on the study of electrical phenomena (especially atmospheric ones).

The young science of electricity continues to develop rapidly - throughout the 18-19 centuries, new discoveries and inventions appeared, new scientific treatises were written, the main subject of which was electric current.

Thus, in 1791, a book about electricity in the muscles of humans and animals, which arises during their contraction, was published; the author was the Italian physicist Galvani. Another Italian, Alessandro Volta, was the one who created in 1800 a hitherto unknown current source, called the “galvanic cell” (in honor of that same Galvani), which several hundred years later appears in the form of the well-known battery.

The “Volta Pillar” was made in the form of a pillar itself, cast from zinc and silver, between the layers of which salted paper was laid.

A few years later in Russia, a professor of physics from St. Petersburg V. Petrov introduces a powerful electric arc to the scientific world, calling it “Volta Arc”. He is the one who came up with the idea of ​​using light from electricity to illuminate indoors. The possibilities for using electrical phenomena in economic life were demonstrated. The battery assembled by the scientist was truly gigantic (length - 12, and height - about 3 meters), its voltage was constant and amounted to 1700 volts. This invention marked the beginning of experiments in the creation of incandescent lamps and methods of electric welding of metals.

Great discoveries in the field of electricity

Petrov's experiments in Russia contributed to the fact that in 1809 the scientist Delarue in England designed the world's first incandescent lamp. And a hundred years later, the American chemist and Nobel laureate I. Langmuir released the first light bulb, which had a luminous tungsten spiral placed in a sealed flask with an inert gas. This marked the start of a new era. Many scientists in Europe, the USA, and Russia conducted numerous experiments and studies to better understand the nature of electricity and put it at the service of man.

Thus, in 1820, the Dane Oerstred discovered the interaction of electrical particles, and in 1821 the famous Ampere put forward and proved a theory about the connection between magnetism and electrical phenomena. The properties of the electromagnetic field were studied in depth by the Englishman M. Faraday, he also discovered the law of electromagnetic induction, which states that in a closed conducting circuit, when the magnetic flux changes temporarily, electrical impulses arise, and also designed the first electric generator. The work of these scientists and dozens of other lesser known ones led to the emergence of a new science, which the German engineer Werner von Siemens gave the name “electrical engineering”.

In 1826, G.S. Ohm, after numerous experiments, put forward the law of the electrical circuit (also known as “Ohm’s law”), as well as new terms: “conductivity”, “electrical driving force”, “voltage of electric current”. His follower, A-M. Ampere, derived the famous “right hand” rule, i.e. determining the direction of electric current flow using a magnetic needle. He also invented a device for amplifying the electric field - coils of copper wires around iron cores. These developments became the harbingers of one of the main inventions in the field of electrical engineering (electromagnetic telegraph) by the German scientist Samuel Thomas Semmering.

In Russia, inventor Alexander Lodygin came up with a light bulb that closely resembles its modern counterparts: a vacuum flask, inside of which is placed a spiral-shaped filament made of refractory tungsten. The scientist sold the rights to this invention to the American corporation General Electric, which launched them into mass production. Therefore, it would be fair to consider the Russian the discoverer of light bulbs, although in all American physics textbooks the “father of the light bulb” is their scientist T. Edison, who also made a significant contribution to the invention of electricity.

Modern round of research

Recent grandiose discoveries in the field of electricity are associated with the name of the great Nikola Tesla, the significance and scale of which have not yet been fully appreciated. This brilliant man invented such things that have yet to be used:

• synchronous generator and asynchronous electric motor, which made an industrial revolution in the modern world;
• fluorescent lamps for lighting large spaces;
• the concept of radio was presented by Tesla several years before the “official father” of radio, Marconi;
• remotely controlled instruments (the first was a boat with large batteries, controlled by radio);
• an engine with rotating magnetic fields (the latest cars that do not require gasoline are now produced on this basis);
• industrial lasers;
• “Laser Tower” is the world’s first device for wireless communication, the prototype of the World Wide Web;
• many household and industrial electrical appliances.

In Russia during the Soviet years, massive electrification was carried out, “Ilyich light bulbs” were mass-produced, Soviet scientists developed and improved their knowledge of electricity and electrical engineering.

Everyone knows what electricity is and encounters it all the time in everyday life. However, it is impossible to definitely name who invented electricity. Each of the great scientists and researchers made their invaluable contribution to the study and use of this wonderful natural phenomenon.

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What is electricity?

Electricity is a set of physical phenomena associated with the presence of electric charge. Although electricity was initially viewed as a phenomenon separate from magnetism, with the development of Maxwell's equations, both were recognized as part of a single phenomenon: electromagnetism. Various common phenomena are associated with electricity such as lightning, static electricity, electric heating, electrical discharges and many others. In addition, electricity underlies many modern technologies.

The presence of an electric charge, which can be either positive or negative, generates an electric field. On the other hand, the movement of electric charges, which is called electric current, creates a magnetic field.

When a charge is placed at a point with a non-zero electric field, a force is exerted on it. The magnitude of this force is determined by Coulomb's law. Thus, if this charge were moved, the electric field would do the work of moving (braking) the electric charge. Thus, we can talk about the electric potential at a certain point in space, equal to the work performed by an external agent in transferring a unit of positive charge from an arbitrarily chosen reference point to this point without any acceleration and, as a rule, measured in volts.

In electrical engineering, electricity is used for:

• supplying electricity to places where electrical current is used to power equipment;
• in electronics, dealing with electrical circuits that include active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive elements.

Electrical phenomena have been studied since ancient times, although progress in theoretical understanding began in the 17th and 18th centuries. Even then, practical uses of electricity were rare, and it was not until the late 19th century that engineers were able to use it for industrial and residential purposes. The rapid expansion of electrical technology during this time transformed industry and society. The versatility of electricity is that it can be used in an almost limitless variety of industries, such as transportation, heating, lighting, communications and computing. Electricity is now the basis of modern industrial society.

History of electricity

Long before there was any knowledge of electricity, people already knew about electric fish shocks. Ancient Egyptian texts dating back to 2750 BC. BC, they called these fish “Thunderbolts of the Nile” and described them as “protectors” of all other fish. Evidence of electric fish reappears thousands of years later from ancient Greek, Roman and Arab naturalists and physicians. Several ancient writers, such as Pliny the Elder and Scribonius Largus, attest to numbness as an effect of electric shocks produced by catfish and electric rays, and they also knew that such shocks could be transmitted through conductive objects. Patients suffering from diseases such as gout or headaches were prescribed to touch such fish with the hope that a powerful electric shock could cure them. It is possible that the earliest and closest approach to discovering the identity of lightning and electricity from any other source was made by the Arabs, who until the 15th century had in their language the word for lightning (raad) applied to electric rays.

Ancient Mediterranean cultures knew that if certain objects, such as amber sticks, were rubbed with a cat's fur, it would attract light objects such as feathers. Thales of Miletus made a series of observations of static electricity around 600 BC, from which he deduced that friction was necessary to make amber capable of attracting objects, unlike minerals such as magnetite, which did not require friction . Thales was wrong in believing that the attraction of amber was due to a magnetic effect, but later science proved the connection between magnetism and electricity. According to a controversial theory based on the discovery of the Baghdad battery in 1936, which resembles a voltaic cell, although it is unclear whether the artifact was electrical in nature, the Parthians may have known about electroplating.

Electricity continued to generate little more than intellectual curiosity for thousands of years until 1600, when the English scientist William Gilbert conducted a thorough study of electricity and magnetism, and distinguished the "magnetite" effect from the static electricity produced by rubbing amber. He coined a new Latin word electricus ("amber" or "like amber", from ἤλεκτρον, Elektron, from Greek: "amber") to denote the property of objects to attract small objects after being rubbed. This linguistic association gave rise to the English words "electric" and "electricity", which first appeared in print in Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica in 1646.

Further work was carried out by Otto von Guericke, Robert Boyle, Stephen Gray and Charles Francois Dufay. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin conducted extensive research into electricity, selling his holdings to finance his work. In June 1752, he famously attached a metal key to the bottom of a kite's string and flew the kite into a stormy sky. A sequence of sparks jumping from the key to the back of the hand showed that the lightning was indeed electrical in nature. He also explained the seemingly paradoxical behavior of the Leyden jar as a device for storing large amounts of electrical charge in terms of electricity, consisting of positive and negative charges.

In 1791, Luigi Galvani announced his discovery of bioelectromagnetism, demonstrating that electricity is the means by which neurons transmit signals to muscles. Alessandro Volta's battery or voltaic pole of the 1800s was made from alternating layers of zinc and copper. For scientists, it was a more reliable source of electrical energy than the electrostatic machines used previously. The understanding of electromagnetism as the unity of electrical and magnetic phenomena occurred thanks to Oersted and Andre-Marie Ampère in 1819-1820. Michael Faraday invented the electric motor in 1821, and Georg Ohm mathematically analyzed the electrical circuit in 1827. Electricity and magnetism (and light) were finally linked by James Maxwell, particularly in his work On Physical Lines of Force in 1861 and 1862.

While the world witnessed rapid progress in the science of electricity in the early 19th century, the greatest advances occurred in the field of electrical engineering in the late 19th century. With the help of people such as Alexander Graham Bell, Otto Titus Blaty, Thomas Edison, Galileo Ferraris, Oliver Heaviside, Anjos Istvan Jedlik, William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin, Charles Algernon Parsons, Werner von Siemens, Joseph Wilson Swan, Reginald Fessenden , Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, electricity evolved from a scientific curiosity to an indispensable tool for modern life, becoming the driving force behind the second industrial revolution.

In 1887, Heinrich Hertz discovered that electrodes illuminated with ultraviolet light created electrical sparks more easily than those not illuminated. In 1905, Albert Einstein published a paper that explained experimental evidence of the photoelectric effect as a result of the transfer of light energy by discrete quantized packets that excite electrons. This discovery led to the quantum revolution. Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 for his “discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.” The photovoltaic effect is also used in photovoltaic cells such as those found in solar panels, and this is often used to generate electricity for commercial purposes.

The first semiconductor device was the cat's whisker detector, which was first used in radios in the 1900s. A whisker-like wire is brought into light contact with a solid crystal (for example, a germanium crystal) in order to detect a radio signal through a contact-transition effect. In a semiconductor assembly, current is supplied to semiconductor elements and connections designed specifically to switch and amplify the current. Electric current can be represented in two forms: as negatively charged electrons, and also as positively charged electron vacancies (unfilled electron spaces in a semiconductor atom), called holes. These charges and holes are understood from the perspective of quantum physics. The building material is most often a crystalline semiconductor.

The development of semiconductor devices began with the invention of the transistor in 1947. Common semiconductor devices are transistors, microprocessor chips, and RAM chips. A specialized type of memory called flash memory is used in USB flash drives, and more recently solid-state drives have begun to replace mechanically rotating magnetic hard disk drives. Semiconductor devices became common in the 1950s and 1960s, during the transition from vacuum tubes to semiconductor diodes, transistors, integrated circuits (ICs), and light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

Basic concepts of electricity

Electric charge

The presence of a charge gives rise to electrostatic force: charges exert a force on each other, this effect was known in ancient times, although it was not understood then. A light ball suspended on a string can be charged by touching it with a glass rod, which itself had previously been charged by rubbing against the fabric. A similar ball charged by the same glass rod will be repelled by the first: the charge causes the two balls to separate from each other. The two balls, which are charged from the rubbed amber rod, also repel each other. However, if one ball is charged by a glass rod and the other by an amber rod, then both balls begin to attract each other. These phenomena were investigated at the end of the eighteenth century by Charles Augustin de Coulomb, who concluded that charge appears in two opposite forms. This discovery led to the well-known axiom: similarly charged objects repel, and oppositely charged objects attract.

The force acts on the charged particles themselves, therefore the charge tends to spread as evenly as possible over the conducting surface. The magnitude of an electromagnetic force, whether attractive or repulsive, is determined by Coulomb's law, which states that the electrostatic force is proportional to the product of charges and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. The electromagnetic interaction is very strong, it is second in strength only to the strong interaction, but unlike the latter, it acts at any distance. Compared to the much weaker gravitational force, the electromagnetic force pushes two electrons apart 1042 times stronger than the gravitational force attracts them.

The study showed that the source of charge is certain types of subatomic particles that have the property of electric charge. Electric charge generates and interacts with electromagnetic force, which is one of the four fundamental forces of nature. The most well-known electric charge carriers are the electron and the proton. The experiment showed that charge is a conserved quantity, that is, the total charge within an isolated system will always remain constant, regardless of any changes that occur within this system. In a system, charge can be transferred between bodies either by direct contact or by transfer through a conductive material such as a wire. The informal term "static electricity" refers to the net presence of charge (or "imbalance" of charges) on a body, usually caused by dissimilar materials being rubbed together and transferring charge from one another.

The charges of electrons and protons are opposite in sign, therefore, the total charge can be either positive or negative. By convention, the charge carried by electrons is considered negative, and that carried by protons is considered positive, following the tradition established by the work of Benjamin Franklin. The amount of charge (amount of electricity) is usually symbolized as Q and expressed in coulombs; each electron carries the same charge, approximately -1.6022 × 10-19 coulombs. The proton has a charge equal in magnitude and opposite in sign, and thus + 1.6022 × 10-19 Coulombs. Not only matter has a charge, but also antimatter; each antiparticle carries an equal charge, but opposite in sign to the charge of its corresponding particle.

Charge can be measured in several ways: An early instrument is the gold leaf electroscope, which, although still used for educational demonstrations, is now replaced by an electronic electrometer.

Electricity

The movement of electric charges is called electric current, and its intensity is usually measured in amperes. The current can be created by any moving charged particles; most often these are electrons, but in principle any charge set in motion represents a current.

By historical convention, positive current is determined by the direction of movement of positive charges flowing from the more positive part of the circuit to the more negative part. The current determined in this way is called conventional current. One of the most well-known forms of current is the movement of negatively charged electrons through a circuit, and thus the positive direction of the current is oriented in the opposite direction to the movement of the electrons. However, depending on conditions, an electric current can consist of a stream of charged particles moving in any direction, and even in both directions at the same time. The convention of considering the positive direction of current to be the direction of movement of positive charges is widely used to simplify this situation.

The process by which an electric current passes through a material is called electrical conductivity, and its nature varies depending on what charged particles are carrying it and the material through which it is moving. Examples of electrical currents include metallic conduction, effected by the flow of electrons through a conductor such as a metal, and electrolysis, effected by the flow of ions (charged atoms) through a liquid or plasma, as in electric sparks. While the particles themselves can move very slowly, sometimes with an average drift speed of only a fraction of a millimeter per second, the electric field that drives them travels at close to the speed of light, allowing electrical signals to travel quickly through wires.

Current produces a number of observable effects that have historically been a sign of its presence. The possibility of water decomposition under the influence of current from a galvanic column was discovered by Nicholson and Carlisle in 1800. This process is now called electrolysis. Their work was greatly expanded upon by Michael Faraday in 1833. Current flowing through the resistance causes localized heating. This effect was described mathematically by James Joule in 1840. One of the most important discoveries concerning current was made by accident by Oersted in 1820, when, while preparing a lecture, he discovered that current flowing through a wire caused the needle of a magnetic compass to turn. This is how he discovered electromagnetism, the fundamental interaction between electricity and magnetism. The level of electromagnetic emissions generated by an electric arc is high enough to produce electromagnetic interference that can harm the operation of adjacent equipment. He discovered electromagnetism, the fundamental interaction between electricity and magnetism. The level of electromagnetic radiation generated by an electrical arc is high enough to produce electromagnetic interference that may interfere with the operation of nearby equipment.

For technical or domestic applications, current is often characterized as either direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC). These terms refer to how current changes over time. Direct current, such as that produced by a battery and required by most electronic devices, is a unidirectional flow from the positive potential of the circuit to the negative potential. If this flow, as is often the case, is carried by electrons, they will move in the opposite direction. Alternating current is any current that continuously changes direction; it almost always has the shape of a sine wave. Alternating current pulsates back and forth within a conductor without moving charge any finite distance over a long period of time. The time-averaged value of alternating current is zero, but it delivers energy first in one direction and then in the opposite direction. Alternating current depends on electrical properties that do not appear in steady-state direct current, such as inductance and capacitance. These properties, however, may become apparent when the circuit is subjected to transients, such as during initial power application.

Electric field

The concept of electric field was introduced by Michael Faraday. An electric field is created by a charged body in the space that surrounds the body and results in a force acting on any other charges located in the field. The electric field acting between two charges is similar to the gravitational field acting between two masses, and also extends to infinity and is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the bodies. However, there is a significant difference. Gravity always attracts, causing two masses to come together, while an electric field can result in either attraction or repulsion. Since large bodies such as planets generally have zero net charge, their electric field at a distance is usually zero. Thus, gravity is the dominant force at large distances in the Universe, despite the fact that it itself is much weaker.

The electric field, as a rule, differs at different points in space, and its intensity at any point is defined as the force (per unit charge) that a stationary, negligible charge would experience if placed at that point. The abstract charge, called the "test charge", must be vanishingly small so that its own electric field disturbing the main field can be neglected, and must also be stationary (immobile) to prevent the influence of magnetic fields. Since the electric field is defined in terms of force, and force is a vector, then the electric field is also a vector, having both magnitude and direction. More specifically, the electric field is a vector field.

The study of electric fields created by stationary charges is called electrostatics. The field can be visualized using a set of imaginary lines, the direction of which at any point in space coincides with the direction of the field. This concept was introduced by Faraday, and the term "field lines" is still sometimes used. Field lines are the paths along which a point positive charge will move under the influence of a field. They are, however, an abstract rather than a physical object, and the field permeates all the intervening space between the lines. Field lines emanating from stationary charges have several key properties: first, they begin on positive charges and end on negative charges; secondly, they must enter any ideal conductor at right angles (normally), and thirdly, they never intersect or close on themselves.

A hollow conducting body contains all its charge on its outer surface. Therefore the field is zero in all places inside the body. A Faraday cage operates on this principle - a metal shell that isolates its internal space from external electrical influences.

The principles of electrostatics are important in the design of high-voltage equipment components. There is a finite limit to the electric field strength that can be withstood by any material. Above this value, electrical breakdown occurs, which causes an electric arc between the charged parts. For example, in air, electrical breakdown occurs at small gaps at electric field strengths exceeding 30 kV per centimeter. As the gap increases, the ultimate breakdown voltage decreases to approximately 1 kV per centimeter. The most noticeable such natural phenomenon is lightning. It occurs when charges are separated in clouds by rising columns of air, and the electric field in the air begins to exceed the breakdown value. The voltage of a large thundercloud can reach 100 MV and have a discharge energy of 250 kWh.

The magnitude of the field strength is greatly influenced by nearby conductive objects, and the strength is especially high when the field has to bend around pointed objects. This principle is used in lightning rods, whose sharp spiers force lightning to discharge into them rather than into the buildings they protect.

Electric potential

The concept of electric potential is closely related to the electric field. A small charge placed in an electric field experiences a force, and work is required to move the charge against that force. Electric potential at any point is defined as the energy that must be expended to move a unit test charge extremely slowly from infinity to that point. Potential is usually measured in volts, and a potential of one volt is the potential at which one joule of work must be expended to move a charge one coulomb from infinity. This formal definition of potential has little practical application, and more useful is the concept of electrical potential difference, that is, the energy required to move a unit of charge between two given points. The electric field has one peculiarity, it is conservative, which means that the path traveled by the test charge does not matter: the same energy will always be expended on the passage of all possible paths between two given points, and thus there is a single value of the difference potentials between two positions. The volt has become so firmly established as a unit of measurement and description of electrical potential difference that the term voltage is used widely and everyday.

For practical purposes, it is useful to define a common reference point against which potentials can be expressed and compared. Although it can be at infinity, it is much more practical to use the Earth itself, which is assumed to have the same potential in all places, as the zero potential. This reference point is naturally referred to as “ground”. The earth is an infinite source of equal amounts of positive and negative charges and is therefore electrically neutral and non-chargeable.

Electric potential is a scalar quantity, that is, it has only a value and no direction. It can be thought of as analogous to height: just as a released object will fall through a difference in height caused by a gravitational field, so a charge will "fall" through a voltage caused by an electric field. Just as maps indicate landforms using contour lines connecting points of equal height, a set of lines connecting points of equal potential (known as equipotentials) can be drawn around an electrostatically charged object. Equipotentials intersect all lines of force at right angles. They must also lie parallel to the surface of the conductor, otherwise a force will be produced that moves charge carriers along the equipotential surface of the conductor.

The electric field is formally defined as the force exerted per unit charge, but the concept of potential provides a more useful and equivalent definition: the electric field is the local gradient of electric potential. Typically, it is expressed in volts per meter, and the direction of the field vector is the line of greatest change in potential, that is, in the direction of the nearest location of the other equipotential.

Electromagnets

Oersted's discovery in 1821 that a magnetic field exists around all sides of a wire carrying an electric current showed that there was a direct connection between electricity and magnetism. Moreover, the interaction seemed different from gravitational and electrostatic forces, two forces of nature then known. The force acted on the compass needle, not directing it towards or away from the current-carrying wire, but acting at right angles to it. Oersted expressed his observation in the slightly unclear words “electrical conflict has rotating behavior.” This force also depended on the direction of the current, because if the current changed direction, then the magnetic force changed it too.

Oersted did not fully understand his discovery, but the effect he observed was reciprocal: the current exerts a force on the magnet, and the magnetic field exerts a force on the current. The phenomenon was further studied by Ampere, who discovered that two parallel wires carrying current exert a force on each other: two wires, with currents flowing through them in the same direction, attract each other, while wires containing currents in opposite directions from each other, repel. This interaction occurs through the magnetic field that each current creates, and on the basis of this phenomenon the unit of measurement of current is determined - Ampere in the international system of units.

This connection between magnetic fields and currents is extremely important because it led to Michael Faraday's invention of the electric motor in 1821. His unipolar motor consisted of a permanent magnet placed in a vessel containing mercury. The current was passed through a wire suspended on a gimbal above a magnet and immersed in mercury. The magnet exerted a tangential force on the wire, which caused the latter to rotate around the magnet as long as current was maintained in the wire.

An experiment conducted by Faraday in 1831 showed that a wire moving perpendicular to a magnetic field created a potential difference at the ends. Further analysis of this process, known as electromagnetic induction, allowed him to formulate the principle now known as Faraday's law of induction, that the potential difference induced in a closed circuit is proportional to the rate of change of the magnetic flux passing through the circuit. The development of this discovery allowed Faraday to invent the first electrical generator, in 1831, which converted the mechanical energy of a rotating copper disk into electrical energy. The Faraday disk was inefficient and was not used as a practical generator, but it showed the possibility of generating electricity using magnetism, and this possibility was taken up by those who followed his developments.

The ability of chemical reactions to produce electricity, and the inverse ability of electricity to produce chemical reactions, has a wide range of applications.

Electrochemistry has always been an important part of the study of electricity. From the original invention of the voltaic column, voltaic cells have evolved into a wide variety of battery types, voltaic cells, and electrolysis cells. Aluminum is produced in large quantities by electrolysis, and many portable electronic devices use rechargeable power sources.

Electrical circuits

An electrical circuit is a connection of electrical components in such a way that the electrical charge, forced to flow along a closed path (circuit), usually performs a number of some useful tasks.

Components in an electrical circuit can take many forms, serving as elements such as resistors, capacitors, switches, transformers, and electronic components. Electronic circuits contain active components, such as semiconductors, that typically operate in a nonlinear mode and require complex analysis to be applied to them. The simplest electrical components are those called passive and linear: although they can temporarily store energy, they do not contain energy sources and operate in a linear mode.

A resistor is perhaps the simplest of passive circuit elements: as its name suggests, it resists current flowing through it, dissipating electrical energy as heat. Resistance is a consequence of the movement of charge through a conductor: in metals, for example, resistance is primarily due to collisions between electrons and ions. Ohm's law is the basic law of circuit theory, and states that the current passing through a resistance is directly proportional to the potential difference across it. The resistance of most materials is relatively constant over a wide range of temperatures and currents; materials that satisfy these conditions are known as "ohmic". Ohm is a unit of resistance, named after Georg Ohm and denoted by the Greek letter Ω. 1 ohm is a resistance that creates a potential difference of one volt when a current of one ampere is passed through it.

A capacitor is a modernization of the Leyden jar and is a device that can store a charge, and thereby store electrical energy in the resulting field. It consists of two conducting plates separated by a thin insulating layer of dielectric; in practice it is a pair of thin strips of metal foil wound together to increase the surface area per unit volume and therefore the capacity. The unit of capacitance is the farad, named after Michael Faraday and symbolized by the symbol F: one farad is the capacitance that creates a potential difference of one volt when storing a charge of one coulomb. Current initially flows through a capacitor connected to a power source as charge accumulates in the capacitor; this current will, however, decrease as the capacitor is charged, and will eventually become zero. The capacitor therefore does not pass direct current, but blocks it.

An inductance is a conductor, usually a coil of wire, that stores energy in a magnetic field created when current passes through it. When the current changes, the magnetic field also changes, creating a voltage between the ends of the conductor. The induced voltage is proportional to the rate of change of current. The proportionality factor is called inductance. The unit of inductance is the henry, named after Joseph Henry, a contemporary of Faraday. An inductance of one henry is an inductance that produces a potential difference of one volt when the rate of change of current passing through it is one ampere per second. The behavior of an inductance is the opposite of that of a capacitor: it will freely pass direct current and block rapidly changing current.

Electric power

Electrical power is the rate at which electrical energy is transferred by an electrical circuit. The SI unit of power is the watt, equal to one joule per second.

Electrical power, like mechanical power, is the rate at which work is performed, measured in watts and denoted by the letter P. The term power input, used colloquially, means "electrical power in watts." The electrical power in watts produced by an electric current I equal to the passage of a charge Q coulomb every t seconds through an electrical potential difference (voltage) V is equal to

P = QV/t = IV

• Q - electric charge in coulombs
• t - time in seconds
• I - electric current in amperes
• V - electrical potential or voltage in volts

Electricity generation is often produced by electric generators, but can also be produced by chemical sources such as electric batteries or in other ways using a wide variety of energy sources. Electrical power is typically supplied to businesses and homes by electric power companies. Electricity bills are typically paid per kilowatt-hour (3.6 MJ), which is the power produced in kilowatts multiplied by the operating time in hours. In the electric power industry, power measurements are made using electricity meters, which store the amount of total electrical energy supplied to the client. Unlike fossil fuels, electricity is a low-entropy form of energy and can be converted into propulsion energy or many other forms of energy with high efficiency.

Electronics

Electronics deals with electrical circuits, which include active electrical components such as vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes and integrated circuits, and associated passive and switching elements. The nonlinear behavior of active components and their ability to control the flow of electrons allows the amplification of weak signals and widespread use of electronics in information processing, telecommunications, and signal processing. The ability of electronic devices to act as switches allows for digital processing of information. Switching elements such as printed circuit boards, packaging technologies, and other various forms of communication infrastructure complement the functionality of the circuit and turn disparate components into a common working system.

Today, most electronic devices use semiconductor components to perform electronic control. The study of semiconductor devices and related technologies is considered a branch of solid state physics, while the design and construction of electronic circuits to solve practical problems falls under the field of electronics.

Electromagnetic waves

The work of Faraday and Ampere showed that a time-varying magnetic field generated an electric field, and a time-varying electric field was the source of a magnetic field. Thus, when one field changes in time, another field is always induced. This phenomenon has wave properties and is naturally called an electromagnetic wave. Electromagnetic waves were theoretically analyzed by James Maxwell in 1864. Maxwell developed a series of equations that could unambiguously describe the relationship between the electric field, magnetic field, electric charge, and electric current. He was also able to prove that such a wave necessarily propagates at the speed of light, and thus light itself is a form of electromagnetic radiation. The development of Maxwell's laws, which unify light, fields and charge, is one of the most important stages in the history of theoretical physics.

Thus, the work of many researchers has made it possible to use electronics to convert signals into high-frequency oscillating currents, and through suitably formed conductors, electricity allows these signals to be transmitted and received via radio waves over very long distances.

Production and use of electrical energy

Generation and transmission of electric current

In the 6th century BC. e. Greek philosopher Thales of Miletus experimented with amber rods, and these experiments became the first research into the production of electrical energy. While this method, now known as the triboelectric effect, could only lift light objects and generate sparks, it was extremely ineffective. With the invention of the voltaic pole in the eighteenth century, a viable source of electricity became available. The voltaic column and its modern descendant, the electric battery, store energy in chemical form and release it as electrical energy on demand. The battery is a versatile and very common power source that is ideal for many applications, but the energy stored in it is finite and once it is used up, the battery must be disposed of or recharged. For large needs, electrical energy must be generated and transmitted continuously through conductive power lines.

Electrical power is typically generated by electromechanical generators driven by steam generated from burning fossil fuels or heat generated by nuclear reactions; or from other sources such as kinetic energy extracted from wind or running water. The modern steam turbine, developed by Sir Charles Parsons in 1884, today produces about 80 percent of the world's electricity using a variety of heat sources. Such generators bear no resemblance to the homopolar Faraday disc generator of 1831, but they still rely on his electromagnetic principle, according to which a conductor, when coupled to a changing magnetic field, induces a potential difference at its ends. The invention of the transformer in the late 19th century meant that electrical energy could be transmitted more efficiently at higher voltages but lower currents. Efficient electrical transmission means, in turn, that electricity can be produced in centralized power plants with the benefits of economies of scale, and then transmitted over relatively long distances to where it is needed.

Since electrical energy cannot be easily stored in quantities sufficient to meet national needs, it must be produced at any time in quantities that are currently required. This requires utilities to carefully forecast their electrical loads and continually coordinate this data with power plants. A certain amount of generating capacity should always be kept in reserve as a safety net for the power grid in case of a sharp increase in electricity demand.

The demand for electricity is growing at a rapid pace as the country modernizes and its economy develops. The United States experienced 12 percent growth in demand in each year of the first three decades of the 20th century. This growth rate is currently observed in emerging economies such as India or China. Historically, the growth rate of demand for electricity has outpaced the growth rate of demand for other types of energy.

Environmental concerns associated with electricity generation have led to an increased focus on generating electricity from renewable sources, particularly wind and hydroelectric power plants. While we can expect continued debate about the environmental impact of various means of generating electricity, its final form is relatively clean.

Methods of using electricity

Electrical transmission is a very convenient way of transmitting energy, and it has been adapted to a huge and growing number of applications. The invention of the practical incandescent light bulb in the 1870s led to lighting being one of the first mass-produced uses of electricity. Although electrification carried its own risks, replacing the open flames of gas lighting greatly reduced the risk of fires inside homes and factories. Utilities have been created in many cities to cater to the growing electric lighting market.

The heating resistive Joule effect is used in incandescent lamp filaments and also finds more direct application in electric heating systems. Although this heating method is versatile and controllable, it can be considered wasteful since most power generation methods already require the production of thermal energy in a power plant. A number of countries, such as Denmark, have issued laws restricting or banning the use of electric resistance heating in new buildings. Electricity, however, is still a very practical source of energy for heating and cooling, with air conditioners or heat pumps representing a growing sector of demand for heating and cooling electricity, the consequences of which utilities are increasingly required to take into account.

Electricity is used in telecommunications, and in fact the electric telegraph, whose commercial use was demonstrated in 1837 by Cook and Wheatstone, was one of the earliest electrical telecommunications applications. With the construction of the first intercontinental and then transatlantic telegraph systems in the 1860s, electricity made it possible to communicate within minutes with the entire globe. Fiber optics and satellite communications have taken over the communications systems market, but electricity can be expected to remain an important part of this process.

The most obvious use of the effects of electromagnetism is in the electric motor, which provides a clean and efficient means of motive power. A stationary motor such as a winch can easily be powered, but a motor for a mobile application such as an electric vehicle must either carry power sources such as batteries with it or collect current by a sliding contact known as a pantograph.

Electronic devices use the transistor, perhaps one of the most important inventions of the 20th century, which is the fundamental building block of all modern circuits. A modern integrated circuit can contain several billion miniaturized transistors in an area of ​​just a few square centimeters.

Electricity is also used as a fuel source for public transport, including electric buses and trains.

The effect of electricity on living organisms

The effect of electric current on the human body

Voltage applied to the human body causes an electrical current to flow through tissue, and although this relationship is not linear, the more voltage is applied, the more current it causes. The threshold of perception varies depending on the frequency of the supply and the location of the current, being approximately 0.1 mA to 1 mA for mains frequency electricity, although current as small as one microampere can be detected as an electrovibration effect under certain conditions. If the current is large enough, it can cause muscle contraction, cardiac arrhythmia, and tissue burns. The absence of any visible signs that a conductor is live makes electricity especially dangerous. The pain caused by electric current can be intense, leading to electricity being sometimes used as a method of torture. The death penalty carried out by electric shock is called electrocution. Electrocution is still a means of judicial punishment in some countries, although its use has become less common in recent times.

Electrical phenomena in nature

Electricity is not a human invention, but can be observed in several forms in nature, a notable manifestation of which is lightning. Many interactions familiar at the macroscopic level, such as touch, friction, or chemical bonding, are caused by interactions between electric fields at the atomic level. The Earth's magnetic field is believed to arise from the natural production of circulating currents in the planet's core. Some crystals, such as quartz, or even sugar, are capable of creating potential differences across their surfaces when subjected to external pressure. This phenomenon, known as piezoelectricity, from the Greek piezein (πιέζειν), meaning "to press", was discovered in 1880 by Pierre and Jacques Curie. This effect is reversible, and when a piezoelectric material is exposed to an electric field, there is a small change in its physical dimensions.

Some organisms, such as sharks, are able to detect and respond to changes in electrical fields, an ability known as electroreception. At the same time, other organisms, called electrogenic, are capable of generating voltages themselves, which serves them as a defensive or predatory weapon. Fishes of the order Gymnotiiformes, of which the electric eel is the most famous member, can detect or stun their prey using high voltages generated by modified muscle cells called electrocytes. All animals transmit information across cell membranes by voltage impulses called action potentials, whose function is to provide the nervous system with communication between neurons and muscles. Electric shock stimulates this system and causes muscle contraction. Action potentials are also responsible for coordinating the activities of certain plants.

In 1850, William Gladstone asked scientist Michael Faraday what the value of electricity was. Faraday replied: "One day, sir, you will be able to tax him."

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, electricity was not part of many people's daily lives, even in the industrialized Western world. Popular culture of the time accordingly often depicted him as a mysterious, quasi-magical force that could kill the living, raise the dead, or otherwise alter the laws of nature. This view began to reign with Galvani's 1771 experiments, which demonstrated the legs of dead frogs twitching when animal electricity was applied. The "reanimation" or reanimation of apparently dead or drowned persons was reported in the medical literature shortly after Galvani's work. These reports became known to Mary Shelley when she began writing Frankenstein (1819), although she does not indicate such a method of reviving the monster. Bringing monsters to life using electricity became a popular theme in horror films later.

As public awareness of electricity, the lifeblood of the second industrial revolution, increased, its users were often shown in a positive light, such as the electricians who were described as having "death through their gloves chilling their fingers as they weave the wires" in Rudyard Kipling's 1907 poem. "Sons of Martha" A variety of electrically powered vehicles figured prominently in the adventure stories of Jules Verne and Tom Swift. Electrical experts, whether fictional or real - including scientists such as Thomas Edison, Charles Steinmetz or Nikola Tesla - were widely perceived as magicians with magical powers.

As electricity ceased to be a novelty and became a necessity in everyday life in the second half of the 20th century, it received special attention from popular culture only when it stopped supplying, an event that usually signals disaster . The people who support his arrival, such as the unnamed hero of Jimmy Webb's song "Wichita Lineman" (1968), were increasingly presented as heroic and magical characters.

Electricity

Electricity or electric shock called a directionally moving stream of charged particles, such as electrons. Electricity also refers to the energy obtained as a result of such movement of charged particles, and the lighting that is obtained on the basis of this energy. The term “electricity” was introduced by the English scientist William Gilbert in 1600 in his essay “On the Magnet, Magnetic Bodies, and the Great Magnet-Earth.”

Gilbert conducted experiments with amber, which, as a result of friction with cloth, was able to attract other light bodies, that is, it acquired a certain charge. And since amber is translated from Greek as electron, the phenomenon observed by the scientist was called “electricity.”

Electricity

A little theory about electricity

Electricity can create an electric field around conductors of electric current or charged bodies. By means of an electric field it is possible to influence other bodies with an electric charge.fv

Electric charges, as everyone knows, are divided into positive and negative. This choice is conditional, however, due to the fact that it has long been made historically, it is only for this reason that a certain sign is assigned to each charge.

Bodies that are charged with the same type of sign repel each other, and those that have different charges, on the contrary, attract.

During the movement of charged particles, that is, the existence of electricity, in addition to the electric field, a magnetic field also arises. This allows you to set relationship between electricity and magnetism.

It is interesting that there are bodies that conduct electric current or bodies with very high resistance. This was discovered by the English scientist Stephen Gray in 1729.

The study of electricity, most fully and fundamentally, is carried out by such a science as thermodynamics. However, the quantum properties of electromagnetic fields and charged particles are studied by a completely different science - quantum thermodynamics, but some quantum phenomena can be quite simply explained by ordinary quantum theories.

Electricity Basics

History of the discovery of electricity

To begin with, it must be said that there is no such scientist who can be considered the discoverer of electricity, since from ancient times to the present day, many scientists have been studying its properties and learning something new about electricity.

• The first person to become interested in electricity was the ancient Greek philosopher Thales. He discovered that amber, which is rubbed on wool, acquires the property of attracting other light bodies.
• Then another ancient Greek scientist, Aristotle, studied certain eels that struck enemies, as we now know, with an electric discharge.
• In 70 AD, the Roman writer Pliny studied the electrical properties of resin.
• However, then for a long time no knowledge was gained about electricity.
• And only in the 16th century, the court physician of the English Queen Elizabeth 1, William Gilbert, began studying electrical properties and made a number of interesting discoveries. After this, literally “electrical madness” began.
• Only in 1600 did the term “electricity” appear, introduced by the English scientist William Gilbert.
• In 1650, thanks to the burgomaster of Magdeburg, Otto von Guericke, who invented an electrostatic machine, it became possible to observe the effect of repulsion of bodies under the influence of electricity.
• In 1729, the English scientist Stephen Gray, while conducting experiments on transmitting electric current over a distance, accidentally discovered that not all materials have the ability to transmit electricity equally.
• In 1733, the French scientist Charles Dufay discovered the existence of two types of electricity, which he called glass and resin. They received these names due to the fact that they were revealed by rubbing glass on silk and resin on wool.
• The first capacitor, that is, an electricity storage device, was invented by the Dutchman Pieter van Musschenbroek in 1745. This capacitor was called the Leyden jar.
• In 1747, the American B. Franklin created the world's first theory of electricity. According to Franklin, electricity is an immaterial liquid or liquid. Another of Franklin's services to science is that he invented the lightning rod and, with the help of it, proved that lightning has an electrical origin. He also introduced the concepts of positive and negative charges, but did not discover charges. This discovery was made by the scientist Simmer, who proved the existence of charge poles: positive and negative.
• The study of the properties of electricity moved to the exact sciences after in 1785 Coulomb discovered the law about the interaction force occurring between point electric charges, which was called Coulomb's Law.
• Then, in 1791, the Italian scientist Galvani published a treatise stating that an electric current arises in the muscles of animals when they move.
• The invention of the battery by another Italian scientist, Volta, in 1800, led to the rapid development of the science of electricity and a subsequent series of important discoveries in this field.
• This was followed by the discoveries of Faraday, Maxwell and Ampere, which occurred in just 20 years.
• In 1874, Russian engineer A.N. Lodygin received a patent for an incandescent lamp with a carbon rod, invented in 1872. Then the lamp began to use a tungsten rod. And in 1906, he sold his patent to Thomas Edison's company.
• In 1888, Hertz recorded electromagnetic waves.
• In 1879, Joseph Thomson discovered the electron, which is the material carrier of electricity.
• In 1911, the Frenchman Georges Claude invented the world's first neon lamp.
• The twentieth century gave the world the theory of Quantum Electrodynamics.
• In 1967, another step was taken towards studying the properties of electricity. This year the theory of electroweak interactions was created.

However, these are only the main discoveries made by scientists that contributed to the use of electricity. But research continues today, and discoveries in the field of electricity occur every year.

Everyone is sure that the greatest and most powerful in terms of discoveries related to electricity was Nikola Tesla. He himself was born in the Austrian Empire, now the territory of Croatia. His baggage of inventions and scientific works includes: alternating current, field theory, ether, radio, resonance and much more. Some admit the possibility that the phenomenon of the “Tunguska meteorite” is nothing more than the work of Nikola Tesla himself, namely an explosion of enormous power in Siberia.

Lord of the World - Nikola Tesla

For some time it was believed that electricity did not exist in nature. However, after B. Franklin established that lightning has an electrical origin, this opinion ceased to exist.

The importance of electricity in nature, as well as in human life, is quite enormous. After all, it was lightning that led to the synthesis of amino acids and, consequently, to the emergence of life on earth.

Processes in the nervous system of humans and animals, such as movement and breathing, occur due to nerve impulses that arise from electricity existing in the tissues of living beings.

Some types of fish use electricity, or rather electrical discharges, to protect themselves from enemies, search for food under water and obtain it. Such fish are: eels, lampreys, electric rays and even some sharks. All these fish have a special electrical organ that works on the principle of a capacitor, that is, it accumulates a fairly large electrical charge and then discharges it onto the victim who touches such a fish. Also, such an organ operates with a frequency of several hundred hertz and has a voltage of several volts. The current strength of the electric organ of fish changes with age: the older the fish becomes, the greater the current strength. Also, thanks to electric current, fish that live at great depths navigate in the water. The electric field is distorted by the action of objects in the water. And these distortions help fish navigate.

Deadly experiments. Electricity

Getting electricity

Power plants were specially created to generate electricity. At power plants, with the help of generators, electricity is created, which is then transmitted to places of consumption via power lines. Electric current is created due to the conversion of mechanical or internal energy into electrical energy. Power plants are divided into: hydroelectric power plants or HPPs, thermal nuclear, wind, tidal, solar and other power plants.

In hydroelectric power plants, generator turbines driven by the flow of water produce electric current. In thermal power plants or, in other words, thermal power plants, electric current is also generated, but instead of water, water vapor is used, which arises during the heating of water during the combustion of fuel, for example, coal.

A very similar operating principle is used in a nuclear power plant or nuclear power plant. Only nuclear power plants use a different type of fuel - radioactive materials, for example, uranium or plutonium. Their nuclei fission, resulting in the release of a very large amount of heat, which is used to heat the water and turn it into water vapor, which then enters a turbine that generates electric current. Such stations require very little fuel to operate. So ten grams of uranium generates the same amount of electricity as a car of coal.

Use of electricity

Nowadays, life without electricity is becoming impossible. It has become quite integrated into the lives of people in the twenty-first century. Electricity is often used for lighting, for example using an electric or neon lamp, and for transmitting all kinds of information using telephone, television and radio, and in the past, telegraph. Also, back in the twentieth century, a new area of ​​application of electricity appeared: a power source for electric motors of trams, subway trains, trolleybuses and electric trains. Electricity is necessary for the operation of various household appliances, which significantly improve the life of a modern person.

Today, electricity is also used to produce quality materials and process them. Electric guitars, powered by electricity, can be used to create music. Electricity also continues to be used as a humane method of killing criminals (the electric chair) in countries that allow the death penalty.

Also, considering that the life of a modern person is becoming almost impossible without computers and cell phones, which require electricity to operate, the importance of electricity will be quite difficult to overestimate.

Electricity in mythology and art

In the mythology of almost all nations there are gods who are capable of throwing lightning, that is, who can use electricity. For example, among the Greeks this god was Zeus, among the Hindus it was Agni, who could turn into lightning, among the Slavs it was Perun, and among the Scandinavian peoples it was Thor.

Cartoons also have electricity. So in the Disney cartoon Black Cape there is an anti-hero Megavolt, who is able to control electricity. In Japanese animation, electricity is wielded by the Pokemon Pikachu.

Conclusion

The study of the properties of electricity began in ancient times and continues to this day. Having learned the basic properties of electricity and learning to use them correctly, people have made their lives much easier. Electricity is also used in factories, factories, etc., that is, it can be used to obtain other benefits. The importance of electricity, both in nature and in the life of modern man, is enormous. Without such an electrical phenomenon as lightning, life would not have arisen on earth, and without nerve impulses, which also arise due to electricity, it would not have been possible to ensure coordinated work between all parts of organisms.

People have always been grateful to electricity, even when they did not know about its existence. They endowed their main gods with the ability to throw lightning.

Modern man also does not forget about electricity, but is it possible to forget about it? He gives electrical powers to cartoon and movie characters, builds power plants to generate electricity, and much more.

Thus, electricity is the greatest gift given to us by nature itself and which, fortunately, we have learned to use.

Electricity can easily be called one of the most important discoveries ever made by man. It has helped the development of our civilization from the very beginning of its appearance....

Electricity can easily be called one of the most important discoveries ever made by man. It has helped the development of our civilization from the very beginning of its appearance. This is the most environmentally friendly type of energy on the planet, and it is likely that electricity will be able to replace all raw materials if they no longer remain on Earth.

The term comes from the Greek. "electron", and means "amber". Back in the 7th century BC, the ancient Greek philosopher Thales noticed that amber has the property of attracting hair and light materials, such as cork shavings. Thus, he became the discoverer of electricity. But it was only by the middle of the 17th century that Thales’s observations were studied in detail by Otto von Guericke. This German physicist created the world's first electrical device. It was a rotating ball of sulfur fixed on a metal pin and looked like amber with the force of attraction and repulsion.

Thales - discoverer of electricity

Over the course of a couple of centuries, Guericke’s “electric machine” was noticeably improved by such German scientists as Bose, Winkler, and the Englishman Hoxby. Experiments with the electric machine gave impetus to new discoveries in the 18th century: In 1707, the physicist Du Fay, originally from France, discovered the difference between the electricity we get from rubbing a glass circle and the electricity we get from rubbing a circle made of tree resin. In 1729, the English scientists Gray and Wheeler discovered that some bodies can transmit electricity through themselves, and they were the first to emphasize that bodies can be divided into two types: conductors and non-conductors of electricity.

A very significant discovery was outlined in 1729 by the Dutch physicist Muschenbroek, who was born in Leiden. This professor of philosophy and mathematics was the first to discover that a glass jar sealed on both sides with sheets of staniol can accumulate electricity. Since the experiments were carried out in the city of Leiden, The device was called the Leyden jar..

Scientist and social activist Benjamin Franklin gave one theory in which he said that there is both positive and negative electricity. The scientist was able to explain the very process of charging and discharging a glass jar and provided evidence that the lining of a Leyden jar can be easily electrified with different charges of electricity.

Benjamin Franklin paid more than enough attention to the knowledge of atmospheric electricity, as did Russian scientists G. Richman, as well as M.V. Lomonosov. Scientist invented lightning rod, with the help of which he substantiated that lightning itself arises from a difference in electrical potentials.

In 1785, Coulomb's law was derived, which described the electrical interaction between point charges. The law was discovered by C. Coulomb, a scientist from France, who created it on the basis of repeated experiments with steel balls.

One of the great discoveries made by the Italian scientist Luigi Galvani in 1791 was that electricity could be generated when two dissimilar metals came into contact with the body of a dissected frog.

In 1800, Italian scientist Alessandro Volta invented the chemical battery. This discovery was important in the study of electricity. This galvanic element consisted of round silver plates, between the plates there were pieces of paper previously soaked in salt water. Thanks to chemical reactions, the chemical battery regularly received electric current.

In 1831, the famous scientist Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction and on this basis invented the world's first electric generator. Discovered concepts such as magnetic and electric fields and invented an elementary electric motor.

The man who made a huge contribution to the study of magnetism and electricity, and put his research into practice, was the inventor Nikola Tesla. Household and electrical appliances that the scientist created are irreplaceable. This man can be called one of the great inventors of the 20th century.

Who first discovered electricity?

It is difficult to find people who do not know what electricity is. But who discovered electricity? Not everyone has an idea about this. We need to figure out what kind of phenomenon this is, who was the first to discover it, and in what year it all happened.

A few words about electricity and its discovery

The history of the discovery of electricity is quite extensive. This first happened back in 700 BC. An inquisitive philosopher from Greece named Thales noticed that amber is able to attract small objects when friction occurs with wool. True, after this all observations ended for a long time. But it was he who is considered the discoverer of static electricity.

Further development occurred much later - after several centuries. The physician William Gilbert, who was interested in the basics of physics, became the founder of the science of electricity. He invented something similar to an electroscope, calling it a versor. Thanks to him, Gilbert realized that many minerals attract small objects. Among them are diamonds, glass, opals, amethysts and sapphires.

Using the versor, Gilbert made a couple of interesting observations:

• flame affects the electrical properties of bodies that arise during friction;
• Lightning and thunder are phenomena of electrical nature.

The word "electricity" appeared in the 16th century. In the 60s of the 17th century, burgomaster Otto von Guericke created a special machine for experiments. Thanks to her, he observed the effects of attraction and repulsion.

After this, research continued. They even used electrostatic machines. In the early 30s of the 18th century, Stephen Gray transformed Guericke's design. He exchanged the sulfur ball for a glass one. Stephen continued his experiments and discovered such a phenomenon as electrical conductivity. Somewhat later, Charles Dufay discovered two types of charges - from resins and glass.

In the 40th year of the 18th century, Kleist and Muschenbruck came up with the “Leyden jar”, ​​which became the first capacitor on Earth. Benjamin Franklin said that glass accumulates charge. Thanks to him, the designations “plus” and “minus” for electrical charges appeared, as well as “conductor”, “charge” and “capacitor”.

Benjamin Franklin led an eventful life. The amazing thing is that he even had enough time to study electricity. However, it was Benjamin Franklin who invented the first lightning rod.

At the end of the 18th century, Galvani published his Treatise on the Force of Electricity in Muscular Movement. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Italian inventor Volta came up with a new current source, calling it the Galvanic element. This design looks like a pillar made of silver and zinc rings. They are separated by papers that have been soaked in salt water. This is how the discovery of galvanic electricity happened. Two years later, Russian inventor Vasily Petrov discovered the Voltaic arc.

Around the same time period, Jean Antoine Nollet designed the electroscope. He recorded the rapid “draining” of electricity from sharply shaped bodies. Based on this, a theory emerged that current affects living beings. Thanks to the discovered effect, a medical electrocardiograph appeared.

Since 1809, there has been a revolution in the field of electricity. An inventor from England, Delarue, invented the incandescent light bulb. A century later, devices with a tungsten spiral were created, which were filled with inert gas. Irving Langmuir became their founder.

Other discoveries

In the 18th century, the later famous Michael Faraday came up with the doctrine of electromagnetic fields.

Electromagnetic interaction was discovered during his experiments by a Danish scientist named Ørsted in 1820. In 1821, the physicist Ampere connected electricity and magnetism in his own treatise. Thanks to these studies, electrical engineering was born.

In 1826, Georg Simon Ohm conducted experiments and outlined the main law of the electrical circuit. After this, specialized terms arose:

• electromotive force;
• conductivity;
• voltage drop in the network.

Andre-Marie Ampère later came up with a rule for determining the direction of current on a magnetic needle. It had many names, but the one that stuck most was the “right hand rule.” It was Ampere who designed the electromagnetic field amplifier - a coil with many turns. They are made of copper wires with iron cores installed in them. In the 30s of the 19th century, the electromagnetic telegraph was invented based on the rule described above.

In the 1920s, the government of the Soviet Union began global electrification. During this period, the term “Ilyich’s light bulb” arose.

Magic electricity

Children need to know what electricity is. But you need to teach in a playful way so that the knowledge gained does not get boring in the very first minutes. To do this, you can attend the open lesson “Magic Electricity”. It includes the following educational objectives:

• generalization of information about electricity in children;
• expand knowledge about where electricity lives and how it can help people;
• introduce your child to the causes of static electricity;
• Explain safety rules for handling household electrical appliances.

Other tasks are also set:

• the child develops a desire to discover something new;
• children learn to interact with the world around them and its objects;
• thinking, observation, analytical abilities and the ability to draw correct conclusions develop;
• Active preparation for school is carried out.

The activity is also necessary for educational purposes. During the event:

• interest in studying the world around us is strengthened;
• there is satisfaction from the discoveries that resulted from the experiments;
• The ability to work in a team is developed.

The following materials are provided:

• toys with batteries;
• plastic sticks according to the number of people present;
• wool and silk fabrics;
• educational toy “Collect an object”;
• cards “Rules for the use of household electrical appliances”;
• colored balls.

This would be a great summer activity for a child.

Conclusion

We cannot say for sure who was actually the first to discover electricity. There is every reason to believe that they knew about him even before Thales. But most scientists (William Gilbert, Otto von Guericke, Volt Ohm, Ampere) fully contributed to the development of electricity.

An alternative version of the history of the discovery of electricity

Science does not know when the discovery of electricity occurred. Even ancient people observed lightning. Later they noticed that some bodies, if rubbed against each other, could attract or repel. The ability to attract or repel small objects was well demonstrated in amber.
In 1600, the first term associated with electricity appeared: electron. It was introduced by William Gilbert, who borrowed this word from the Greek language, where it meant amber. Later, such properties were discovered in diamond, opal, amethyst, and sapphire. He called these materials electricians, and the phenomenon itself - electricity.
Otto von Guericke continued Gilbert's research. He invented the electrostatic machine, the first instrument for studying electrical phenomena. It was a rotating metal rod with a ball made of sulfur. When rotating, the ball rubbed against the wool and acquired a significant charge of static electricity.

In 1729, the Englishman Stephen Gray improved Guericke's machine, replacing the sulfur ball with a glass one.

In 1745, Jürgen Kleist and Peter Muschenbruck invented the Leyden jar, which is a glass container of water that can accumulate a significant charge. It became the prototype of modern capacitors. Scientists mistakenly believed that the charge accumulator was water, not glass. Later, mercury was used instead of water.
Benjamin Franklin expanded the set of terms to describe electrical phenomena. He introduced the concepts: charge, two types of charges, plus and minus to designate them. He owns the terms capacitor and conductor.
Many experiments conducted in the 17th century were descriptive in nature. They did not receive practical application, but served as the foundation for the development of the theoretical and practical foundations of electricity.

The first scientific experiments with electricity

Scientific research into electricity began in the 18th century.

In 1791, Italian physician Luigi Galvani discovered that current flowing through the muscles of dissected frogs caused them to contract. He called his discovery animal electricity. But Luigi Galvani could not fully explain the results obtained.

The discovery of animal electricity interested the Italian Alexandro Volta. The famous scientist repeated Galvani's experiments. He repeatedly proved that living cells produce electrical potential, but the cause of its appearance is chemical, not animal. This is how galvanic electricity was discovered.
Continuing his experiments, Alexandro Volta designed a device that generates voltage without an electrostatic machine. It was a stack of alternating copper and zinc plates separated by pieces of paper soaked in a salt solution. The device was called a voltaic column. It became the prototype of modern galvanic cells used to generate electricity.
It is important to note that Napoleon Bonaparte was very interested in Volta's invention, and in 1801 he granted him the title of count. And later, famous physicists decided to name the unit of voltage 1 V (volt) in his honor.

Luigi Galvani and Alexandro Volta are great experimenters in the field of electricity. But in the 18th century. they could not explain the essence of the phenomena. The construction of the theory of electricity and magnetism began in the 19th century.

Scientific research into electricity in the 19th century

Russian inventor Vasily Petrov, continuing Volta's experiments, discovered the Voltaic arc in 1802. In his experiments, carbon electrodes were used, which first moved, became heated due to the flow of current, and then moved apart. A stable arc arose between them, capable of burning at a voltage of only 40-50 volts. This generated a significant amount of heat. Petrov's experiments were the first to show the possibilities of the practical use of electricity and contributed to the invention of the incandescent lamp and electric welding. For his experiments, V. Petrov designed a battery 12 m long. It was capable of creating a voltage of 1700 volts.

The disadvantages of the voltaic arc were the rapid combustion of coals, the release of carbon dioxide and soot. Several of the greatest inventors of the time took up the task of improving the light source, each of whom made his own contribution to the development of electric lighting. They all believed that the source of heat and light should be in a glass flask from which the air has been pumped out.
The idea of ​​using a metal filament was proposed back in 1809 by the English physicist Delarue. But for many years experiments with carbon rods and threads continued.
American textbooks on electricity claim that the father of the incandescent lamp is their compatriot Thomas Edison. He made a huge contribution to the history of the discovery of electricity. But Edison's experiments in improving incandescent lamps ended in the late 1870s, when he abandoned the metal filament and returned to carbon rods. His lamps could burn uninterruptedly for about 40 hours.

20 years later, Russian inventor Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin invented a lamp that used a refractory metal filament twisted into a spiral. The air was pumped out of the flask, which caused the filament to oxidize and burn out.
The world's largest company for the production of electrical products, General Electric, bought a patent from Lodygin for the production of lamps with tungsten filament. This allows us to assume that the father of the incandescent lamp is our compatriot.
Chemists and physicists worked to improve the incandescent light bulb, and their discoveries, inventions, and improvements led to the creation of the incandescent light bulb that people use today.

In the 19th century electricity began to be used not only for lighting.
In 1807, the English chemist Humphry Davy managed to isolate the alkali metals sodium and potassium from a solution using an electrolytic method. There were no other ways to obtain these metals at that time.
His compatriot William Sturgeon invented the electromagnet in 1825. Continuing his research, he created the first model of an electric motor, the operation of which he demonstrated in 1832.

Formation of the theoretical foundations of electricity

In addition to inventions that received practical application, in the 19th century. the construction of the theoretical foundations of electricity, the discovery and formulation of basic laws began.

In 1826, the German physicist, mathematician, and philosopher Georg Ohm experimentally established and theoretically substantiated his famous law, which describes the dependence of the current in a conductor on its resistance and voltage. Ohm expanded the range of terms used in electricity. He introduced the concepts of electromotive force, conductivity, and voltage drop.
Thanks to the publications of G. Ohm, which were sensational in the scientific world, the theory of electricity began to develop rapidly, but the author himself was persecuted by his superiors and was fired from his position as a school mathematics teacher.

A huge contribution to the development of the theory of electricity was made by the French philosopher, biologist, mathematician, and chemist Andre-Marie Ampère. Due to his parents' poverty, he was forced to educate himself. At the age of 13, he had already mastered integral and differential calculus. This allowed him to obtain mathematical equations describing the interactions of circular currents. Thanks to Ampere’s work, two related fields appeared in electricity: electrodynamics and electrostatics. For unknown reasons, Ampere stopped studying electricity in adulthood and became interested in biology.

Many physicists of different nationalities worked on the development of the theory of electricity. Having studied their works, the outstanding English physicist James Clerk Maxwell built a unified theory of electrical and magnetic interactions. Maxwell's electrodynamics provides for the presence of a special form of matter - an electromagnetic field. He published his work on this problem in 1862. Maxwell's theory made it possible to describe already known electromagnetic phenomena and predict unknown ones.

History of the development of electrical communications

As soon as ancient people had a need to communicate, there was a need to organize messaging. The history of the development of communications before the discovery of electricity is multifaceted and each nation has its own.

When people appreciated the possibilities of electricity, the question arose about transmitting information with its help.
The first attempts to transmit electrical signals were made immediately after Galvani's experiments. The source of energy was a voltaic pole, and the receiver was frog legs. This is how the first telegraph appeared, which was improved and modernized over a long period of time.

To transmit information, it first had to be encoded and then decoded after reception. To encode information, the American artist Samuel Morse in 1838 came up with a special alphabet consisting of combinations of dots and dashes, separated by spaces. The exact date of the first telegraph transmission is known - May 27, 1844. Communication was established between Baltimore and Washington, located at a distance of 64 km.

Communication means of this kind were able to transmit messages over long distances and store them on paper tape, but they also had a number of disadvantages. A lot of time was spent encoding and decoding messages; the receiver and transmitter had to be connected by wires.

In 1895, Russian inventor Alexander Popov was able to demonstrate the operation of the first wireless transmitter and receiver. An antenna (or a Hertz vibrator) was used as a receiving element, and a coherer was used as a recording element. A DC battery with a voltage of several volts was used to power the device.
The invention of the coherer is largely due to the French physicist Edwart Branly, who discovered the possibility of changing the resistance of metal powder by exposing it to electromagnetic waves.
Communication facilities built on the basis of Popov’s transmitter and receiver are still in use today.

A sensational report about his discoveries in the field of transmission of electromagnetic waves in 1891 was made by the Serbian scientist Nikola Tesla. But humanity was not ready to accept his ideas and understand how to put Tesla’s inventions into practice. Many decades later, they formed the basis of today's means of electronic communications: radio, television, cellular and space communications.

Few people think about when electricity appeared. And its history is quite interesting. Electricity makes life more comfortable. Thanks to him, television, the Internet and much more became available. And it is no longer possible to imagine modern life without electricity. It significantly accelerated the development of mankind.

History of electricity

If you start to understand when electricity appeared, then you need to remember the Greek philosopher Thales. It was he who first drew attention to this phenomenon in 700 BC. e. Thalles discovered that when amber was rubbed against wool, the stone began to attract light objects.

In what year did electricity appear? After the Greek philosopher, no one studied this phenomenon for a long time. And knowledge in this area did not increase until 1600. In this year, William Gilbert introduced the term “electricity” by studying magnets and their properties. Since that time, scientists have begun to intensively study this phenomenon.

First discoveries

When did electricity appear and was used in technical solutions? In 1663, the first electric machine was created, which made it possible to observe the effects of repulsion and attraction. In 1729, the English scientist Stephen Gray conducted the first experiment in which electricity was transmitted over a distance. Four years later, the French scientist C. Dufay discovered that electricity has 2 types of charge: resin and glass. In 1745, the first electric capacitor appeared - the Leyden jar.

In 1747, Benjamin Franklin created the first theory to explain this phenomenon. And in 1785, electricity appeared. Galvani and Volt studied it for a long time. A treatise was written on the action of this phenomenon during muscle movement and a galvanic object was invented. And the Russian scientist V. Petrov became the discoverer

Lighting

When did electricity appear in houses and apartments? For many, this phenomenon is primarily related to lighting. Therefore, it should be considered when the first light bulb was invented. This happened in 1809. The inventor was the Englishman Delarue. A little later, spiral-shaped light bulbs appeared, which were filled with inert gas. They began to be produced in 1909.

The advent of electricity in Russia

Some time after the introduction of the term “electricity,” this phenomenon began to be studied in many countries. The beginning of change can be considered the appearance of lighting. In what year did electricity appear in Russia? According to this date - 1879. It was then that electrification using lamps was carried out for the first time in St. Petersburg.

But a year earlier in Kyiv, in one of the railway workshops, electric lights were installed. Therefore, the date of the appearance of electricity in Russia is a somewhat controversial issue. But since this event went unnoticed, the official date can be considered the lighting of the Liteiny Bridge.

But there is another version when electricity appeared in Russia. From a legal point of view, this date is the thirtieth of January 1880. On this day, the first electrical engineering department appeared in the Russian Technical Society. His duties were to oversee the introduction of electricity into everyday life. In 1881, Tsarskoye Selo became the first European city to be completely illuminated.

Another significant date is May fifteenth, 1883. On this day, the Kremlin was illuminated for the first time. The event was timed to coincide with the accession to the Russian throne of Alexander III. To illuminate the Kremlin, electricians installed a small power station. After this event, lighting first appeared on the main street of St. Petersburg, and then in the Winter Palace.

In the summer of 1886, by decree of the emperor, the Electric Lighting Society was established. It was engaged in the electrification of the entire St. Petersburg and Moscow. And in 1888, the first power plants began to be built in the largest cities. In the summer of 1892, the debut electric tram was launched in Russia. And in 1895 it appeared. It was built in St. Petersburg, on the river. Bolshaya Okhta.

And in Moscow, the first power plant appeared in 1897. It was built on Raushskaya embankment. The power plant generated three-phase alternating current. And this made it possible to transmit electricity over long distances without significant loss of power. In other cities, construction began at the dawn of the twentieth century, before the First World War.