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Benjamin Franklin (Franklin, Benjamin - Scientist): Experiments
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Benjamin Franklin (Franklin, Benjamin - Early) , and more.
Benjamin Franklin (Franklin, Benjamin - Early) , and more.
At the age of 42, Franklin retired from his prosperous printing business, ``to have leisure to read, study, and make experiments." The scope of his scientific work was remarkable. Beyond his key contributions to understanding electrcity, Franklin wrote major papers on population growth, on meterology, on heat conduction and evaporation, charted the Gulf Stream, studied bioluminescence and the stilling of water waves by a surface layer of oil. He ... advanced arguments in favor of conservation of mass and the wave theory of light. Although always alert for practical applications, his style was that of an explorer, eager for adventure and insight. However, Franklin did not consider science as important as public service.
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In the summer of 1766, Dr. Franklin went over to Germany accompanied by Sir John Pringle, who spent some time at Pyrmont for the benefit of the waters. Franklin made a more extended journey* but little is known of it, except that he visited Gottingen, Hanover, and some of the principal cities and universities on the continent, and returned to London after an absence of eight weeks. During this tour he learned from the boatmen in Holland, that boats propelled by an equal force move more slowly in shoal than in deep water. He afterwards performed a variety of experiments to prove and illustrate this fact, which he considered important in the construction of canals. The results of these experiments, with an explanation of them on philosophical principles, he communicated in a letter to Sir John Pringle.
After returning to Philadelphia, Benjamin married Deborah Reed. They ran a shop that sold sundry items. Benjamin ... continued his successful printer’s business and was appointed Public Printer for Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, and New Jersey. He became so successful that at age 42 he sold his business and devoted himself to his other interests, especially his scientific experiments.
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Logan and Franklin were ... interested in optics. Logan made observations on light passing through wavy and flat glass. Using soap bubbles, he also tested Isaac Newton’s treatise on refraction, reflection and colors of light. Benjamin Franklin’s experimentation with optics led him to develop the bifocal lens, an invention as practical now as it was then!
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Franklin noted a principle of refrigeration by observing that on a very hot day, he stayed cooler in a wet shirt in a breeze than he did in a dry one. To understand this phenomenon more clearly Franklin conducted experiments. On one warm day in Cambridge, England in 1758, Franklin and fellow scientist John Hadley experimented by continually wetting the ball of a mercury thermometer with ether and using bellows to evaporate the ether. With each subsequent evaporation, the thermometer read a lower temperature, eventually reaching 7 °F (-14 °C). Another thermometer showed the room temperature to be constant at 65 °F (18 °C). In his letter “Cooling by Evaporation,” Franklin noted that “one may see the possibility of freezing a man to death on a warm summer’s day." Each year the frozen food industry gives a Franklin Award in honor of his observing this phenomenon.
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Franklin believed strongly in the importance of political freedom to the American experiment. As such, he remarked, "those who would give up a little liberty, to gain a little security, deserve neither, and will lose both," a stern warning applicable especially in today's world.
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