Zap!

LightningY’know that whole key/kite/lightning experiment thingie that Ben Franklin did to prove that lightning is electrical (something that seems obvious to us today)?

Well, that happened today, June 15, in 1752.

Fortunately, Franklin was insulated at the time.

Others trying Franklin’s proposed experiment weren’t.

Wikipedia notes: "Others, such as Prof. Georg Wilhelm Richmann of St. Petersburg, Russia, were spectacularly electrocuted during the months following Franklin’s experiment."

Ouch!

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Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

10 thoughts on “Zap!”

  1. “Others, such as Prof. Georg Wilhelm Richmann of St. Petersburg, Russia, were spectacularly electrocuted during the months following Franklin’s experiment.”
    U-S-A! U-S-A!
    🙂

  4. Um, the U-S-A didn’t exist in 1752. 😛
    Col-o-nies! Col-o-nies!
    Happy Now?

  5. Then, in 1955, Dr. Emmett Brown demonstrated that bolt lightning is capable of dissipating sufficient energy to power a 1.21-gigawatt flux capacitor long enough to complete a time travel operation.
    However, the results of his experiments were not generally known until 30 years later.

  6. Knowing what lightning does to trees, it seems rather dumb to try to get lightning to strike you, even if you weren’t quite sure what it was.

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