Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In 1745, Peter Collinson, a businessman from London who corresponded with American and European scientists, donated a German "glass tube" [4] along with instructions how to make static electricity, to Franklin's Library Company of Philadelphia. [5] Collinson was the library's London agent and provided the latest technology news from Europe.
Lord Kelvin used this foundation of accumulated knowledge to, in 1859, create an apparatus involving the interaction of a stream of water with the Earth's static electric field to cause charge separation and subsequent measurement of charge to make atmospheric electricity measurements.
The largest air-insulated Van de Graaff generator in the world, built by Dr. Van de Graaff in the 1930s, is now displayed permanently at Boston's Museum of Science. With two conjoined 4.5 m (15 ft) aluminium spheres standing on columns 22 ft (6.7 m) tall, this generator can often obtain 2 MV (2 million volts).
Static electricity is a major hazard when refueling an aircraft. Discharge of static electricity can create severe hazards in those industries dealing with flammable substances, where a small electrical spark might ignite explosive mixtures. [14]
An electrostatic generator, or electrostatic machine, is an electrical generator that produces static electricity, or electricity at high voltage and low continuous current. The knowledge of static electricity dates back to the earliest civilizations, but for millennia it remained merely an interesting and mystifying phenomenon , without a ...
The generation of static electricity from the relative motion of liquids or gases is well established, with one of the first analyses in 1886 by Lord Kelvin in his water dropper which used falling drops to create an electric generator. [114]
Armstrong Hydroelectric Machine. The Armstrong effect is the physical process by which static electricity is produced by the friction of a fluid. It was first discovered in 1840 when an electrical spark resulted from water droplets being swept out by escaping steam from a boiler.
Atmospheric electricity describes the electrical charges in the Earth's atmosphere (or that of another planet). The movement of charge between the Earth's surface, the atmosphere, and the ionosphere is known as the global atmospheric electrical circuit .