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In the 1830's, Michael Faraday, a British physicist, made one of the most significant discoveries that led to the idea that atoms had an electrical component. Faraday placed two opposite electrodes in a solution of water containing a dissolved compound.
- Overview
- Early life
English physicist and chemist Michael Faraday was one of the greatest scientists of the 19th century. His many experiments contributed greatly to the understanding of electromagnetism.
What was Michael Faraday’s childhood like?
Michael Faraday’s father was a blacksmith. His mother was a country woman of great calm and wisdom. Faraday was one of four children who were often hungry, since their father was often ill and couldn’t work steadily. At an early age, Faraday began to earn money by delivering newspapers for a book dealer and bookbinder.
Where did Michael Faraday study?
Michael Faraday received a basic education at Sunday school. When he was an apprentice bookbinder, he was offered a ticket to attend chemical lectures by Humphry Davy. The lectures inspired Faraday to become a scientist. He eventually became Davy’s laboratory assistant, enabling him to learn chemistry from one of the greatest practitioners of the day.
What did Michael Faraday discover?
Michael Faraday was born in the country village of Newington, Surrey, now a part of South London. His father was a blacksmith who had migrated from the north of England earlier in 1791 to look for work. His mother was a country woman of great calm and wisdom who supported her son emotionally through a difficult childhood. Faraday was one of four children, all of whom were hard put to get enough to eat, since their father was often ill and incapable of working steadily. Faraday later recalled being given one loaf of bread that had to last him for a week. The family belonged to a small Christian sect, called Sandemanians, that provided spiritual sustenance to Faraday throughout his life. It was the single most important influence upon him and strongly affected the way in which he approached and interpreted nature.
Faraday received only the rudiments of an education, learning to read, write, and cipher in a church Sunday school. At an early age he began to earn money by delivering newspapers for a book dealer and bookbinder, and at the age of 14 he was apprenticed to the man. Unlike the other apprentices, Faraday took the opportunity to read some of the books brought in for rebinding. The article on electricity in the third edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica particularly fascinated him. Using old bottles and lumber, he made a crude electrostatic generator and did simple experiments. He also built a weak voltaic pile with which he performed experiments in electrochemistry.
Britannica Quiz
Electricity: Short Circuits & Direct Currents
Faraday’s great opportunity came when he was offered a ticket to attend chemical lectures by Sir Humphry Davy at the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London. Faraday went, sat absorbed with it all, recorded the lectures in his notes, and returned to bookbinding with the seemingly unrealizable hope of entering the temple of science. He sent a bound copy of his notes to Davy along with a letter asking for employment, but there was no opening. Davy did not forget, however, and, when one of his laboratory assistants was dismissed for brawling, he offered Faraday a job. Faraday began as Davy’s laboratory assistant and learned chemistry at the elbow of one of the greatest practitioners of the day. It has been said, with some truth, that Faraday was Davy’s greatest discovery.
When Faraday joined Davy in 1812, Davy was in the process of revolutionizing the chemistry of the day. Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier, the Frenchman generally credited with founding modern chemistry, had effected his rearrangement of chemical knowledge in the 1770s and 1780s by insisting upon a few simple principles. Among these was that oxygen was a unique element, in that it was the only supporter of combustion and was also the element that lay at the basis of all acids. Davy, after having discovered sodium and potassium by using a powerful current from a galvanic battery to decompose oxides of these elements, turned to the decomposition of muriatic (hydrochloric) acid, one of the strongest acids known. The products of the decomposition were hydrogen and a green gas that supported combustion and that, when combined with water, produced an acid. Davy concluded that this gas was an element, to which he gave the name chlorine, and that there was no oxygen whatsoever in muriatic acid. Acidity, therefore, was not the result of the presence of an acid-forming element but of some other condition. What else could that condition be but the physical form of the acid molecule itself? Davy suggested, then, that chemical properties were determined not by specific elements alone but also by the ways in which these elements were arranged in molecules. In arriving at this view he was influenced by an atomic theory that was also to have important consequences for Faraday’s thought. This theory, proposed in the 18th century by Ruggero Giuseppe Boscovich, argued that atoms were mathematical points surrounded by alternating fields of attractive and repulsive forces. A true element comprised a single such point, and chemical elements were composed of a number of such points, about which the resultant force fields could be quite complicated. Molecules, in turn, were built up of these elements, and the chemical qualities of both elements and compounds were the results of the final patterns of force surrounding clumps of point atoms. One property of such atoms and molecules should be specifically noted: they could be placed under considerable strain, or tension, before the “bonds” holding them together were broken. These strains were to be central to Faraday’s ideas about electricity.
- L. Pearce Williams
The structure of atoms is somehow related to electricity. (p.95) Discovered atoms have negative particles (electrons) using a cathode ray tube. Discovered electron’s charge to mass ratio: 1.76 x 108 C/g. (p. 97-98) Thomson’s Plum Pudding Model, 1900.
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Michael Faraday Best known for his work on electricity and electrochemistry, Faraday proposed the laws of electrolysis. He also discovered benzene and other hydrocarbons.
Michael Faraday FRS (/ ˈ f ær ə d eɪ,-d i /; 22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic induction , diamagnetism and electrolysis .
Key points. J.J. Thomson's experiments with cathode ray tubes showed that all atoms contain tiny negatively charged subatomic particles or electrons. Thomson's plum pudding model of the atom had negatively-charged electrons embedded within a positively-charged "soup."
In 1838, Michael Faraday passed a current through a rarefied air-filled glass tube and noticed a strange light arc with its beginning at the cathode (negative electrode) and its end almost at the anode (positive electrode). Crookes Tubes.
