Was Ben Franklin's 'kite' story a lie?

all the science groupies here and nobody has any thoughts on this?

It does sound like Bullshit. I don't think the key would make any difference in the experiment as the string would be the conductive path to ground. As I am assuming everything is wet and the potential is high enough that a string of any sort would conduct - no key necessary.

Why Franklin would need all this to prove lightning is electricity is beyond me. How did that prove it was? Why not just observe it hitting a tree or something.

All I know is I read that other people tried to repeat Franklin's experiment and got killed in the process. Maybe he was a lucky sumbitch.

I don't believe in that shit either

OMFG, so I guess the story about George Washinton's cherry tree is also a lie. What next, you'll tell me there's no Easter bunny, who died for our sins!

[link to www.apples4theteacher.com]

I thought what Franklin captured was "St. Elmo's Fire" such as seen on ships at sea.

First time *I* ever heard it that way. I always heard the key was struck by lightning. Who told you it was st elmo type stuff?

"Does an un-grounded key even have enough physical mass to attract a discharge?"

First off -- un-grounded key??
The ONLY possible way to get an arc is to have an un-grounded key. (the high potential jumps from the key to form an ark (electrical discharge)

If the key was grounded, there would be NO spark as the electricity would go straight to ground.

Secondly does the air have enough physical mass to attrack a discharge?? Answer this question and you will see the air is simply a dielectric between 2 electrical charges, break this dielectric down or shorten its distance (with say... a kite string) and what do you get? Electrical breakdown of the dielectric.

The most basic understanding of electricity is needed to "get it".



Also, it has been shown and demonstrated publicly that this particular experiment needs no storm and can be replicated on a sunny day in good weather using wire as kite string. Ya thats right ( they even showed it on the 'Zapped' show on discovery Canada').

Fuck people are stupid... I'm possibly even stupider for wasting my time answering this when it can be brushed of so easily using simple ignorance and doublethink.

lol....

They are making this harder on themselves. Putting to much thought into it.

The original poster is probably a Jew who has heard rumours about Franklin's hatred of Jews. So now he has to lie about him.

Please stop attacking Founding Fathers. They have long since passed and were better men than you OP! Smarter as well.

"The conquest of Canada would be a mere matter of marching"

-Thomas jefferson-

LOL

Yeah well apparently those are the exact two things you DID use when you posted, judging by the point-blank stupidity of your assertions. If the stupid ingnorant retard bullshit you just posted was true then explain how lightning rods work? They're GROUNDED you idiot moron poser wanna-be.

You're only defending Franklin because he was a fellow jew claiming credit for "discoveries" that he did not in fact make.

You kosher turds did real well with that strategy while you controlled the written word, but now thanks to the internet all your self-aggrandizing posing is exposed for the fallacy it really is, and it's drivin' ya nutz!

Here's another jew faker, that Fleming guy or whatever his name was that claimed to "discover" pennicillin. The *FACT* of the matter is that Polish and Russian peasants had been applying the mold that grows on rye bread to infected wounds for hundreds of years. Your jewboy didn't discover SHIT.

Your monopoly on the written word buried Gentile discoveries and painted yourselves "smarter than us" by ignoring our discoveries and then later recording those discoveries under your own names. But in the era of the internet not ONE jew has distinguished himself above any other race. Your house of cards is coming DOWN. Glad to see it bothers you.

THE BEN FRANKLIN KITE STORY IS PURE BULLSHIT.

More likely it was more bullshit calculated to scare anyone off from discovering that it cannot be replicated and therefore is not true.

What are you blubbering about Canadian, do you know? I didn't see anyone ask if "air have enough physical mass to attrack a discharge". Nice attempt at misdirection of attention though. Well no not nice, more like pathetic. And it fooled nobody. Franklin was a fraud.

Ben's interest in electricity was not just limited to lightning. He received an electricity tube from his friend Peter Collinson and began to play around with it, performing experiments. However, it is Ben's interest in lightning that we best remember.

Ben suspected that lightning was an electrical current in nature, and he wanted to see if he was right. One way to test his idea would be to see if the lightning would pass through metal. He decided to use a metal key and looked around for a way to get the key up near the lightning. As you probably already know, he used a child's toy, a kite, to prove that lightning is really a stream of electrified air, known today as plasma. His famous stormy kite flight in June of 1752 led him to develop many of the terms that we still use today when we talk about electricity: battery, conductor, condenser, charge, discharge, uncharged, negative, minus, plus, electric shock, and electrician.

Ben understood that lightning was very powerful, and he also knew that it was dangerous. That's why he also figured out a way to protect people, buildings, and ships from it, the lightning rod.

Have you ever heard of Ben's lightning bells? Ben was always looking for new ideas about electricity, since it was one of his favorite pastimes.

Ben also developed another device to help him understand electricity. Called "lightning bells," the bells would jingle when lightning was in the air. Following are two descriptions.

In September 1752, I erected an Iron Rod to draw the Lightning down into my House, in order to make some Experiments on it, with two Bells to give Notice when the Rod should be electrified. A contrivance obvious to every Electrician.

I found the Bells rang sometimes when there was no Lightning or Thunder, but only a dark Cloud over the Rod; that sometimes after a Flash of Lightning they would suddenly stop; and at other times, when they had not rang before, they would, after a Flash, suddenly begin to ring; that the Electricity was sometimes very faint, so that when a small Spark was obtained, another could not be got for sometime after; at other times the Sparks would follow extremely quick, and once I had a continual Stream from Bell to Bell, the size of a Crow-Quill. Even during the same Gust there were considerable variations.

Excerpted from: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. Edited by Leonard W. Labaree. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1962. Vol. 5, p. 69, letter from Benjamin Franklin to Peter Collinson dated September 1753.

What quantity of lightning a high, pointed rod, well communicating with the earth, may be expected to discharge from the clouds silently in a short time, is yet unknown; but I reason from a particular fact to think it may at some times be very great. In Philadelphia I had such a rod fixed to the top of my chimney, and extending about nine feet above it. From the foot of this rod, a wire (the thickness of a goose-quill) came through a covered glass tube in the roof, and down through the well of the staircase; the lower end connected with the iron spear of a pump. On the staircase opposite too my chamber door, the wire was divided; the ends separated about six inches, a little bell on each end; and between the bells a little brass ball, suspended by a silk thread, to play between and strike the bells when clouds passed with electricity in them. After having frequently drawn sparks and charged bottles from the bell of the upper wire, I was one night awaked by loud cracks on the staircase. Starting up and opening the door, I perceived that the brass ball, instead of vibrating as usual between the bells, was repelled and kept at a distance from both; while the fire passed, sometimes in very large, quick cracks from bell to bell, and sometimes in a continued, dense, white stream, seemingly as large as my finger, whereby the whole staircase was inlightened (sic) as with sunshine, so that one might see to pick up a pin. And from the apparent quantity thus discharged, I cannot but conceive that a number of such conductors must considerably lessen that of any approaching cloud, before it comes so near as to deliver its contents in a general stroke; an effect not to be expected from bars unpointed, if the above experiment with the blunt end of the wire is deemed pertinent to the case.

The Writings of Benjamin Franklin. Edited by Albert Henry Smyth. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1906. Vol. 5, pp. 421-422, "Experiments, observations, and facts tending to support the opinion of the utility of long, pointed rods, for securing buildings from damage by strokes of lightning," by Benjamin Franklin. Read at the Committee appointed to consider the erecting of conductors to secure the [powder] magazines at Purfleet, August 27th, 1772.

Forgot the links.


[link to www.fi.edu]


[link to www.fi.edu]

You all are sheep. French scientist discovered it, a month prior to Franklin "discovering it". Better than that--- Egyptian chariots have these square boxes on them with burn marks all of the way around them. (friction) Remember, they wore silk cape, robes etc... This was found on more than a few chariots.

Franklin is also the only non-president on american money..




-freemason pawn, as most well known people in usa and england-

First: Any *MORON* can plainly see that lightning is electricity with their own eyes. This was hardly "HIS" observation.

Second, I pasted a random chunk of your post into google and thus I know you did NOT write this reply, you just pasted it from off the web.


"electricity tube" lol


Benjamin(jew name) LIED.