Question

Describe Franklin's experiment. What did he conclude from his experiment?

Answer 1

Hint
This experiment was conducted by Benjamin Franklin in 1752, also known as the kite experiment. It was the first attempt to show that the lightning which occurs in thunderstorms is electricity.

Complete step by step answer
For this experiment, he used a kite with two strings attached to it- a dry silk string and a conductive hemp string.
The kite was flown in a thunderstorm, and the silk string was kept dry by letting his son fly it from inside a shelter. The other string was with Franklin, and a house key (metal) was attached to its end which was in turn connected to a Leyden jar.
A Leyden jar is a device, which can store high voltage electrical charge, it contains two metal terminals separated by a distance inside a closed hollow glass bottle, it can be thought of as an earlier form of capacitor.
When the kite was flown, Franklin observed that the hemp string had soaked in the water and was conductive of electricity. The loose threads of the hemp string were observed to stand upright and repel each other, thus giving proof that this was Electricity and Leyden jar was charging.
This brought him to the conclusion that lightning is made from electrical discharge. This later led to the development of Lightning rods, which could protect a structure from being hit with lightning.

Note
In the kite experiment, the electric charge collected was from the clouds, no visible lightning had struck the kite. The electric current produced by the thunder lightning can be around 30,000 amperes, which is highly dangerous and destructive.