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Discovery of Electricity
Benjamin Franklin discovered electricity in 1752 with his Kite-flying experiment in which he tied a key to a kite string during a thunderstorm, proving that static electricity and lightning were indeed, the same thing. -
Coulomb's Law
Charles Augustin de Coulomb invented the Coulomb law in 1783 by using a calibrated torsion balance to measure the force between electric charges. In studying this force, others observed that charged objects sometimes attract one another and sometimes repel. -
Components of a Circuit
While The first electric circuit was invented by Alessandro Volta in 1800, each component of the circuit was founded in different eras. The resistor was invented by Otis Frank Boykin in 1959. The transistor was invented by John Bardeen, Walter Brattain, and William Shockley in 1947. The capacitor was invented by Pieter van Musschenbroek in 1746, the inductor was invented by Michael Faraday in 1831, and the diode was invented by John Ambrose Fleming in 1904. -
Magnetic Field
Hans Christian Ørste discovered by accident that electric current creates a magnetic field by observing that a current flowing through a wire would move a compass needle placed beside it. This showed that an electric current produced a magnetic field. -
Magnetic Force in a Wire with Current
The French physicist André Ampère developed a mathematical law to describe the magnetic forces between current-carrying wires in the late 1820s. -
Ohm's First and Second Law
It was developed by Georg Simon Ohm in 1825 but his work was only formally published in 1827. Ohm demonstrated that there are no "perfect" electrical conductors through a series of experiments in 1825. Every conductor he tested offered some level of resistance. These experiments led to Ohm's law. -
Concepts of Real and Conventional Current
The concepts of Current were given by James Prescott Joule in 1841. Such concepts were studied by Joules by immersing a length of wire in a fixed mass of water and measured the temperature rise due to a known current through the wire for a 30 minute period. -
Concept of Electric Fields
Michael Faraday discovered the concepts of electric fields in 1845. He discovered that a magnetic field influenced polarized light – a phenomenon known as the magneto-optical effect, later named the Faraday effect. -
Kirchhoff's First and Second Law
Kirchhoff's first law, also known as the junction rule, stated that the sum of all currents entering a junction must equal the sum of all currents leaving the junction. His second law stated that the algebraic sum of changes in potential around any closed circuit path (loop) must be zero. These rules were created through spectroscopy: Incandescent solids, liquids, or dense gases – which lit up after they were heated – emit a continuous spectrum of light: they emit light at all wavelengths. -
Right and Left-hand rule
The left and right-hand thumb rules were founded by John Ambrose Fleming in the late 19th century. The purpose of the left-hand rule is to find the direction of motion in an electric motor while the purpose of the right-hand rule is to find the direction of induced current when a conductor moves in a magnetic field.