These videos are amazing. They really show how science progresses not just via great minds like Faraday, Maxwell Einstein, but through amateurs, thrill seekers, ordinary people. I love how Kathy gives historical context, personal profiles of the scientist, and plenty of humor. She is a gifted teacher. Everybody who wants to understand how we reached this point in technology Should see these videos as required viewing..
Thank you for the lovely review, made my day. If you feel like it please recommend my videos on social media, it works so much better when it is not just me saying "hey, watch my videos"! Thanks again. Kathy
Musschenbroek with my favorite quote of the day:! "I've found out so much about electricity, that I reached the point where I understand nothing and can explain nothing!"
Living Extraordinary I love that line. Up there with Hertz who wrote (2 years before discovering radio waves) “ realized that everything I thought I had discovered was already discovered by somebody else”. But Musschenbrowk’s line is better
@@Kathy_Loves_Physics how.. ahh.. .. can i ask .. how is it beause the subject is of "historical importance" , Ie.. "as a history teacher" you are .. have a lot of latitude with what you want to teach.. I mean compared with another (like maths,) teacher; you have more latitude? is that right or? thank ou
As far as I know the Leyden Jar is named after Leiden in the Netherlands, not Germany, ( Leyden being the contemporary spelling) where Musschenbroek was born and university educated. Musschenbroek did work in Germany but that was at the university of Duisburg before he returned to the Netherlands to work at the university of Utrecht.
This is a great video and I'm definitely sharing it with my students. Thank you for making physics history fun and interesting. One small point of correction though, Pieter van Musschenbroek was from the Dutch (not German) town of Leiden (Leyden). Since I'm teaching at an international school in the Netherlands at the moment, I had to be sure to mention that correction to my students :)
I am so sorry about that. Another person corrected me on this but I can't change a video after posting it (although I did add a card so maybe that will help). Hope your students like it and forgive me.
A common mistake is to think that Dutch means Deutsch (German). Van Musschenbroek was a Dutchman, so a citizen of the Netherlands working at the university of Leiden. It is the city I was born in. Also the city where the Pilgrim fathers stayed for a while before setting of on the Maflower. So you Americans should remember !
I have had to retire early because of health reasons. I am reconnecting with the subject of electricity after more than 30 years. I am enjoying your videos immensely.
5:00 : Leiden is a Dutch and not a German city, and Musschenbroek is actually pronounced "Mush'n'brooke". We Dutch speaking people like to make things unpronounceable: it's one of those things that defines us, I guess. Your French is excellent, by the way! (I'm afraid I'm Belgian, so I speak both pretty well). I really enjoy your videos! They are very informative and fun to watch. I've learned a ton watching them. Thanks!
Nice video, but two small things to keep in mind: Leyden, Germany is in fact Leiden (or Leyden in old spelling), The Netherlands. Also, once you get electrocuted, you're dead. I don't think everyone you say who was electrocuted, was actually electrocuted.
I was wondering if someone would comment on this. Electrocution is death by electric shock. A friend of mine has a favourite intro at the beginning of his electrical safety classes: "Welcome to the electrical safety class. First up, who here in the class has been electrocuted?" and sure enough people put their hands up. :)
I have now viewed a few of your videos. We have always learned science (physics) from a book...just the facts...no context or history mostly. Your idea of providing context and history makes physics much more interesting and insight to where we are today in the use of science and technology. Bravo! Well done! and thank you.
I am binging through this whole channel, what a treat. One correction: this bottle was invented in the Dutch town of Leiden. Pronounced the same, but v Musschenbroek was Dutch.
Guericke's experiments with the sulfur globe were published in 1672, so I consider him the father of electricity, and the most underrated scientist/inventor. If it wasn't for this simple electrostatic generator made of sulfur, nobody would come up later with the Leyden Jar, and the Volta battery later.
So thorough and informing, the most indepth one I've seen on the subject. Please never stop, the world needs more people like you. Your passion for physics, facts, history and detail is entraining and something we should all internalize, as these things are most important to navigate our future
Hello Kathy, i just want to thank you for your great effort sharing these videos. It is awesome and so reasonable to learn a topic with its history and you are the best at explaining this. i am so excited to watch every one of these videos. Please keep up doing these great videos. Greetings from Turkey ❤💡
Your videos are just wonderful. I can't stop watching them, one by one... You mesmerize me with a subject that I usually didn't like much, and you make me study English at the same time... Thank you !!!
It reminds me of that Billy Connolly sketch where he describes a meter designed to measure pain, and how it was tested and calibrated. Google the "Stonefish" segment, LOL.
They're getting harder to find, but I had thought of collecting about 50 of the Cathode Ray Tubes from clunky old TV sets to make a 1 Million volt capacitor. Each one can easily hold 20,000 volts with very high capacitance. I have all sorts of high voltage experiments that would be very expensive to do otherwise. It would take up a lot of room though. Guess I'll build my lair by the lagoon 😂
Kathy, your videos are amazing. I’ve been jumping through your channel for the last week and have loved every video you’ve put out. I very much wish my university had a History of Electricity course as part of the EE curriculum.
These are really great videos. I'm reading Kuhn for a Philosophy of Science class and your series has been a great way to catch up on some woeful gaps in my knowledge of science and its history. Thank you! :)
Franklin didn't "discover" electricity. We knew about it but just didn't understand it at the time. What Franklin did do was study it, learned where it came from, and figured out how to control it enough to eliminate lightning strikes from damaging buildings. Another big surprise, he did not fly that kite in a rainstorm. He flew it before an approaching storm to prove that electricity came from the air and that he could collect and guide it.
3:43 I love the trick played by some hotels who use synthetic fibre carpets throughout the building - you shuffle along building up charge and when you touch the brass handrail of the stairs all gets released!
Leyden, Germany? I don't think so. Leyden (Leiden) is a city in the Netherlands. Musschenbroek was a Dutchman. (at the university of Leiden, in the Netherlands). As a Belgian I have to state: "Do NOT underestimate the Dutch) ;-)
This is great! I feel like a lot of RU-vidrs are following this pattern of experimentation today. Ironically I think they had a better network with their reputations and letter writing than we do today. I have a few off the wall theories and pushing for evidence and experimentation in the community of ancient technology. I beleive the Egyptians KNEW what they were doing when they were alternating Glass and Gold.
First of all I want to thank you for sharing your amazing video's with the world. I enjoy them very much! I love how you explain how some words we still use today related to electricity came into existence. Induction (to induce) was my favourite one, yet! At the 4:08 point you mention that Van Musschenbroeck is from Leiden, Germany. The town of Leiden is in The Netherlands, not Germany. Van Muschenbroeck is Dutch, not Deutsch :-) . The most famous Dutch person from Leiden is...Rembrandt!
IbraHimself so glad you liked the video and I am so sorry to have misplaced the town of Leiden. I wish I could redo this video but I would lose all the views. Sorry again especially to any viewers from the Netherlands 🇳🇱
Hey! Doing a little lecture about defibrillators and elektrocardioversion and just saw your clip, thank you for explaining the Leyden jar visually, I really liked it a lot!
Glad I could help. Sounds like a fascinating lecture. By the way, you might want to check out my video on Galvani and the one on Galvani's nephew Aldini as Galvani discovered that electricity could make dead animals jump and came up with an electrical theory of biology and Aldini was the first to use a battery to try to reanimate the dead way back in 1802 (although he used bodies of criminals so they were hung so a defibrillator wouldn't have worked even if his equipment had been powerful which it wasn't). Amazingly, he did get the body to move and even open an eye! Fascinating but a little gross IMHO.
Interesting that the Leyden Jar is called that. We call it "de Leidse Fles", the Bottle from Leiden. Much more of a bottle than a jar. (cue Captain Reynolds from Casablanca, "I'm shocked! Shocked...!")
My favorite possession as a kid was a small VandeGraaf generator, shamelessly marketed as an Atom Smasher by Lafayette Electronics. On a crisp day, it could throw a 2-inch spark, hitting my hand with a sharp but mild snap. I can't remember where I read about Leyden jars,
... but I made one, which condensed the harmless 2-inch spark to a quarter of an inch, projecting a painful jolt to my hand and, one time, to my cat's nose, prompting Schnitzel to temporarily revise her opinion of me.
Very nice, except, Leyden neither professor van Musschenbroek were German, but Dutch. Dutch is used for the people or the language of Holland (The Netherlands). Leiden (or Leyden as it was spelled in the past) is a city in Zuid-Holland, one of the provinces in th Netherlandswith one of the most famous universities in the country. Maybe because Dutch and Deutch (for German) look more or less the same caused the misunderstanding.
Modern knowledge about electricity cast doubt on the mechanism you described for storing charge in a capacitor. There are very interesting experiments when a charged flat capacitor is disassembled and then assembled with the replacement of some parts. Some of these experiments baffle even highly literate people. For example, this was done by physics teachers who run the RU-vid channel GetAClass in series of videos "Where a charge stored in capasitor".
Ewald Georg was one of Prussia's von Kleist family. The von Kleists include military men (quite a number of field marshals), literary men, and philosophers. At times the same von Kleist is all three. During the Nazi Era two von Kleists were closely involved in the Hitler assassination plot and one paid the price. Another field Marshall von Kleist was notably humane towards during WWII's Russian campaign. He was a humanist. After the war the Russians wanted him turned over for alienating Russians from Russia by being such a nice guy. Only the Russians could dream up such horrors. Said von Kleist died in Russia.
dear Kathy, I have to correct you Pieter van Musschenbroek was Dutch and lived in Leiden.... holland not in Germany.... hence it is called Leyden jar een Leidsche flesch in old Dutch or Leidse fles in modernday Dutch. greetings from Holland; the Netherlands. ps i like your vis, very educational...
When I was at school in 1981, our school textbooks gave us enough history of physics for us to understand how people came to understand these ideas. Some part of the process by which the scientists arrived at their conclusions was given to us, without which the textbooks would be mere information, not knowledge. But I find that the present day school textbooks in my country are cursory and in a great hurry to convey the information and move on. I recently volunteered to make a set of video lessons in the local language, and finding their textbooks lacking the proper sequence of historical development, I am trying to connect the dots myself. Encyclopedia Brittanica is a good source. apart gthat, could you suggest any other good reference?
Strangely enough, I like looking at Wikipedia. Not that I trust everything in it but Wikipedia gives a good outline of how things happened with links and then you can go to the original source from that so you can validate what was true and what was misstated. Also, if you have any interest in using any parts of my video or in translating any parts of my video to any other language I give permission and I would be delighted. (my contact information is in the about me page)
So if you just touch one part of it you don’t make a complete circuit and you won’t get shocked however, I did get shocked occasionally when part of my hand got too close to the other side and a spark completed the circuit. It wasn’t that big a deal, I’ve had worse and dry days when I lived in Utah.
Because it make you happy I hit the like button ⚡🧲🤣. Your fun and informative videos are very entertaining. Wish school was as fun as you make learning.
Hi, Kathy! The videos are amazing and I've been learning a lot through them. Therefore, is it possible for you to share your sources with us? I do want to mention the historic part in my scientific paper and I would like to read the articles or books you had got :) Thanks a lot !!!
I am so glad you liked them. You can find more information on the history of the Leyden Jar from: Benjamin, P "A History of electricity" (1898) pp. 514-536 Heilbron, J "Electricity in the 17th and 18th Centuries" (1979) pp. 313-320 Priestly, J "History and Present State of Electricity" (1767) pp. 84-97 Also, feel free to email me (in the about page) with any questions and I will try my best to help out. Good luck on your paper.
Then later comes Edison, Tesla, Maxwell, and others who improved our understanding of electricity all the way down to the proton and electron. In college physics today you learn how to solve the Maxwell equations...
@@vk2ig Yes. Ever since the start of Federal Aid to Education, the quality of K-12 education has been slowly spiraling downward. By the late 1990's my son's High Scholl physics book had already been dumbed down to an alarming extent. And, to make matters worse, they had stopped teaching it in metric. What a colossal missed opportunity.
Will make a video on it as it was super easy and worked well but here you go: Took the lid from a 5 gallon bucket, drilled a hole in the center, secured a screw in the hole with bolts and washers. Used the same screwdriver to spin the lid while rubbing it with rabbit fur (although I think wool will work). Then, stood on a plastic stand and held a large aluminum disposable cooking pan on the lid. Presto chango, a $6 Van de Graaff! Hope that helps, tell me if you had any problems or how it worked.
Leiden (misspelled as Leyden) is a city in the Netherlands not Germany. And I love your video's. Can you give some information on scientific background?
I’m really sorry about that mistake and I think I made it in 2 videos for some weird reason. Sorry. I wrote about my background on my Patreon page and you don’t have to pay for it to read the post: www.patreon.com/posts/60904853
I have a 240vac fan motor that runs full strength on just one of the two phases, i.e., it runs on 120 vac. How can this be. What am I missing here. And I used to think that I understood basic home electrical wiring. I can really sympathize with Musschenbroek.
Here something odd: water has a relative dielectric constant of about 81. Mica is only 4 and the other dielectric materials are about this range. So why water not used in the making of capacitors? 🤔 You turn the water into a gel very easily to, so that makes it easier to work with. I used these silica crystals that I bought. They're food safe too.
You'd need distilled water. And it wouldn't be able to react with anything (e.g. the material in the plates of the capacitor), as otherwise it would form an ionic solution where the ions can easily move and thus conduct electricity. Transformer oil is used in some capacitors - it doesn't react with the plate material.
@@vk2ig thanks.👍 I forgot about oil. I wonder what the dielectric constant of oil is? 🤔 You also reminded me that water dissolves almost everything over time.👍👍 It might start off pure water, but it won't take long before it isn't so pure anymore. Maybe stainless steel would work? 🤔
Kathy, I appreciate your job. In this episode one thing is intriguing - the alcohol. If it was to burn, it should had been distilated. Such alcohol is not an electrolite, I suppose. So how did the capacitor work? Do you know any details about that alcohol?
You would probably need a distilled spirit, e.g. vodka, which has a higher concentration of alcohol. I doubt it will work with something like beer. The water in the liquor (see previous reply) acts as a conductor (easily ionized) and shorts the circuit. Think of a flambé or saganaki at a Greek restaurant. The liquid in the capacitor is still only water which is also acting as a conductor which helps to distribute the negative charge over the inside wall of the jar.
I wonder if those science experiments can also be done with rats. I mean with rats as the scientists who deliberately give themselves electrical shocks!
