Benjamin Franklin, Alessandro Volta, and Michael Faraday:
The Electricity Laboratory

Everything you need to know before you begin.

Overview

The Electricity Laboratory

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790), Alessandro Volta (1745–1827), and Michael Faraday (1791–1867) each helped transform humanity’s understanding of electricity.  Franklin investigated its strange ability to spark, attract, repel, and gather in objects.  Volta discovered how to produce a continuous electrical current, and Faraday uncovered a powerful connection between electricity, magnetism, and motion.  In this unit, students enter a bustling building filled with the workshops of history’s great scientists and follow these discoveries as they unfold.

Students begin in Franklin’s workshop, where they create tiny sparks and investigate the invisible forces of static electricity.  They use charged balloons to attract and repel objects, search for patterns in the materials affected by electricity, and explore how an electroscope detects electrical charge.  Franklin’s account of his famous kite experiment then raises a new question: Can electricity be captured and stored?  Students will answer that question by building a simple Leyden jar.

Their journey continues in Volta’s laboratory, where towers of metal discs offer a new approach to electricity.  Rather than storing a charge that is released in a single spark, Volta’s pile produces a continuous electrical flow.  Students construct a Voltaic pile and then investigate how that flow can be directed.  By building a conductivity tester and examining household materials, they discover the different roles played by conductors and insulators.

In the final lessons, students descend into Faraday’s workshop and investigate his conviction that the forces of nature are deeply connected.  They observe an electric current move a compass needle, build an electromagnet, and construct a simple motor.  Across the unit, electricity develops from a curious spark into a force that can be stored, generated, directed, and used to produce motion.  Students experience the chain of questions and discoveries that helped turn electricity from a laboratory mystery into one of the most useful forms of power in the modern world.

Schedule

This unit is organized around the work of three scientists, with each scientist leading students through two lessons.  Most of the lessons have significant building projects, and adult supervision will be necessary.  Lessons can usually be completed in 60-90 minutes, depending on the speed with which you complete the projects. 

Benjamin Franklin Lesson 1 – Introducing Electricity

Benjamin Franklin Lesson 2 – Lightning in a Bottle

Alessandro Volta Lesson 1 – Generating Electricity

Alessandro Volta Lesson 2 – Directing Electricity

Michael Faraday Lesson 1 – Electricity and Magnetism

Michael Faraday Lesson 2 – Electricity and Motion

 

Materials Needed

This curriculum works best with The Laboratory: Apprentice Journal (available on Amazon here).  Each lesson includes instructions to record observations and test results in that journal. 

All lessons involve projects.  Most materials needed for these projects are common household items.  The following are less common items you will need.

    • Black permanent marker

    • Cardstock paper

    • Tissue paper

    • Packing tape

    • Electrical tape

    • Aluminum foil

    • Paper clips

    • Wire cutters

    • Sandpaper

    • Balloons

    • Empty aluminum soda can

    • Plastic jar, such as a clean peanut-butter jar

    • Plastic water bottle with cap

    • Small floating platform, such as a slice of cork, piece of Styrofoam, or plastic bottle cap

    • Sewing needle

    • Metal clothes hanger

    • 24- or 26-gauge enameled copper magnet wire (like this)

    • 18–22 gauge bare copper wire (like this)

    • PVC pipe—approximately three feet long

    • Vinegar

    • Small LED (like this)

    • 9-volt battery

    • AA battery

    • Rare-earth disc magnet or neodymium magnet (like this)

    • Real compass or smartphone with a compass or map

    • Alligator-clip leads (optional) (like this)

The Lessons

Click on a lesson below to get started.

1. Benjamin Franklin – Introducing Electricity

Students meet Benjamin Franklin, and begin their exploration of electricity.  They create sparks, use static electricity to charm a tissue-paper snake, and test electricity’s power to attract or repel objects.  Through these investigations, students begin exploring electrical charge as an invisible force of fascinating possibility.  Older students may also build an electroscope that detects whether an object is electrically charged.

Get Started

2. Benjamin Franklin – Lightning in a Bottle

Franklin recounts the day he flew a kite beneath a storm and found evidence that lightning and the sparks produced in his workshop were manifestations of the same electrical force.  His story introduces the Leyden jar, an early battery-like device that can collect electrical charge and release it later.   Students build their own Leyden charge, charge it up, and then discharge it.  Along the way, students learn why electricity moves from one place to another.

Get Started

3. Alessandro Volta – Generating Electricity

After leaving Franklin’s workshop, students meet Alessandro Volta and consider the limitations of electricity that can be stored but released only in a brief spark.  But Volta has invented a solution: the Voltaic tower, a battery producing a continuous flow of electricity.  In this lesson, students construct a Voltaic pile and test its power.  Through the activity, they encounter the crucial difference between a sudden electrical discharge and a current that continues to flow.

Get Started

4. Alessandro Volta – Directing Electricity

Volta explains that generating a continuous electrical current is useful only if its path can also be controlled.  Students consider how conductors provide pathways for electricity while insulators prevent it from escaping those pathways.  They build a conductivity tester and use it to examine objects from around their homes.  By comparing their results, students identify patterns among materials that conduct electricity and those that resist its flow.

Get Started

5. Michael Faraday – Electricity and Magnetism

Students enter Michael Faraday’s laboratory, where they explore the deep connection between electricity and magnetism.  They make a simple compass and observe what happens when an electrical current passes near its needle.  Students then build an electromagnet and test its capabilities.  Along the way, Faraday suggests that electricity and magnetism are deeply connected in a beautiful and mysterious unity.

Get Started

6. Michael Faraday – Electricity and Motion

Students discover Faraday’s electric motor—history’s first motor—and go on to build their own model of a simple motor from a battery, magnet, and copper wire.  Students observe how these components work together to create motion.  The activity completes the unit’s progression from creating and controlling electricity to using it to perform work.

Get Started
Return to Laboratory Main Page