Lightning Rods
Lightning Rods “The electrical fire would, I think, be drawn out of a cloud silently, before it could come near enough to strike…” said Benjamin Franklin.3 Contrary to popular belief, a lightning rod does not attract lightning. The lightning rod provides a path towards the ground to conduct massive electrical currents when lightning does occur. The pointed metal rod, usually attached to the roof of a building, could be an inch in diameter and connected to a large piece of copper or an aluminum alloy, also an inch in diameter.1 Benjamin Franklin, always a lover of storms, first arose upon other electrical experiments in 1746. Soon after, he turned his home into a miniature laboratory and began working. That summer, after shocking himself during an experiment, he started to mark down all of his experiments and sent them to scientist Peter Collinson in London. After all of these experiments, Franklin started to use the words positive and negative, instead of “vitreous” and “resinous,” previously used before. A letter to Collinson in 1749 described the concept of an electrical battery, but no ideas for its use.3 Later that year, he came to be certain of similarities between electricity and lightning. These include: the color of the light, its crooked direction, cracking noise, and other things. Sharing the belief of lightning being electricity with many other scientists, Franklin was determined to prove it no matter what it took. Not only wanting to prove this theory, but to protect people, buildings, and other structures from lightning.3 Franklin finally chose to do his own experiment with lightning, the extraordinary kite and key experiment. In Philadelphia, of June 1752, Franklin grew impatient while waiting for the Christ Church steeple to be finished for his experiment to take place. He decided that a kite could get close enough to the storm clouds for the experiment to take place. Then came his next delay: finding something he could