1On October 27th, Benjamin Franklin was born in a worker's family in Boston. My father is an English immigrant. At that time, he made candles and soap. He had ten children. Franklin ranked eighth. Franklin entered school at the age of eight. Although his academic performance is excellent, his father's income can't afford him to go to school because there are too many children at home. So he left school at the age of ten and went home to help his father make candles. At the age of twelve, he was an apprentice in his eldest brother's printing factory. Since then, he has worked as a printer for nearly ten years, but his study has never stopped. He saved money for meals to buy books. At the same time, taking advantage of my work, I met apprentices from several bookstores, secretly borrowed books from bookstores at night, looked at them all night, and returned them the next morning. It was during this period that Franklin learned arithmetic that he failed in the school exam twice, and read books about navigation by Sailor and Sermi. From these navigation books, he came into contact with geometry knowledge. He also read Locke's "Human Understanding" and "The Art of Thinking", written by the Boer Loyalist School. Franklin's research is getting deeper and deeper. From popular books on natural science and technology to papers by famous scientists and works by famous writers. He once contributed under the pseudonym RichardSaunders, and the editor of the newspaper thought that the article was written by "a famous writer". Franklin left Boston on 1723, and worked as a worker in Keevil Printing House in Philadelphia and Parvi and Watts Printing House in London, England. 1In the autumn of 726, Franklin returned to Philadelphia. At this time, he had mastered the exquisite printing technology, started to run a printing factory independently, printed and distributed the Pennsylvania Newspaper, and published the Poor Richard Yearbook, which was later translated into twelve languages and sold well in Europe and America. /kloc-in the autumn of 0/727, in Philadelphia, he founded a reading club with several young people, and organized workers, technicians, shoemakers, masons and poets to discuss philosophy, science, technology and literature and art every Friday. At this time, Franklin was less than thirty years old. Through hard self-study, he became a knowledgeable scholar and an enlightenment thinker, and his reputation in North America is increasing day by day. Under Franklin's leadership, the "* * * Reading Society" existed for almost forty years, and later developed into the American Philosophy Society founded by 1743, which became the center of American scientific thought. 1769 was elected as the president of the association. At the age of 25, he founded the first public library in North America in Philadelphia and later developed into a public library in North America. At the age of 45, he founded Philadelphia College (later University of Pennsylvania).
As a politician, there are many important events related to Franklin in American and world history. From 1757 to 1775, he went to Britain as a representative of North American colonies for many times to negotiate. After the outbreak of the War of Independence, he participated in the Second Continental Congress and the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. From 1776 to 1785, 70-year-old Franklin crossed the ocean to France again. With his efforts, the United States and France formed an alliance in 1778, which won the support of the French and European people for the North American War of Independence. From 65438 to 0787, he actively participated in the formulation of the American Constitution and organized a movement against slavery. 1787 was elected as the representative of the Constituent Assembly and served as the highest executive speaker of Pennsylvania. He actively opposed the oppression and slavery of blacks and actively advocated the abolition of slavery.
In his life, he won many honors. 1753 was awarded the copley Medal by the Royal Society and honorary degrees by Harvard University and Yale University in the same year. 1756 was elected as a member of the Royal Society, 1772 as a foreign academician of the French Academy of Sciences, and 1789 as a foreign institute of the Academy of Sciences in Petersburg.
His main scientific work is in electricity. This only accounted for about ten years in his life. During the period of 1743 ~ 1744, Franklin saw a simple electrical experiment done by A.SPence from Scotland in Philadelphia and Boston, which aroused a strong desire to explore. He bought all the exhibits, and his friend Peter Cdlinson, who met at the Royal Society in London, learned about it. He sent him a lot of books, electrical works and some friction electrification equipment. Franklin and his friends from the Philosophic Society of Philadelphia conducted many electrical experiments and theoretical explorations.
Franklin made many important contributions to electricity. Through experiments, he systematically cleared up many confused electrical knowledge at that time (such as the generation, transmission, induction, storage, charging and discharging of electricity, etc.). He used to connect many Leiden bottles to store more charge. He used experiments to prove that the metal foil inside and outside the Leyden bottle has the same charge, but the electrical properties are opposite. 1747 On May 25th, he put forward the theory of single fluid of electricity in his letter to collinson, and expressed the surplus or shortage of this fluid with mathematical symbols. He also believes that triboelectrification is only charge transfer rather than creation, and the positive and negative charges generated must be strictly equal-this idea later developed into one of the basic laws in electricity-the law of charge conservation. He used this theory to explain the principle that capacitors have dielectrics.
Franklin's second greatest contribution was the unification of electricity between heaven and earth, which completely broke people's fear of lightning. 1749, while watching a series of experiments, his wife, Lida, accidentally bumped into a metal bar on a Leyden bottle and was knocked down by an electric spark. She was ill for a week. Although this was an accident in the experiment, Franklin, who was quick-thinking, thought of lightning in the air. After repeated thinking, he came to the conclusion that lightning is also a discharge phenomenon, which is essentially the same as electricity generated in the laboratory. So, he wrote a paper entitled "On lightning in the sky is the same as our electricity" and sent it to the Royal Society. But Franklin's great idea was ridiculed by many people, and some even ridiculed him as "a madman who wants to separate God from thunder and lightning".
Franklin was determined to prove everything with facts. 1752 One day in June, it was overcast with thunder and lightning, and a storm was coming. Franklin and his son William came to an open place with a kite with a metal pole on it. Franklin held the kite high, while his son flew with the kite string. Because of the strong wind, the kite was quickly put into the sky. In an instant, thunder and lightning, pouring rain. Franklin and his son are pulling a kite string together, and the father and son are anxiously looking forward to it. At this moment, just a flash of lightning passed over the kite. Franklin approached the string on the kite with his hand, and there was a terrible numbness at once. He couldn't restrain his inner excitement and shouted, "William, I got an electric shock!" " "Later, he introduced the electricity from the kite line into the Tesco bottle. After returning home, Franklin conducted various electrical experiments with lightning, which proved that lightning in the sky has exactly the same properties as electricity generated by artificial friction. Franklin's hypothesis that electricity in the sky and electricity on the ground are the same thing has been well confirmed in his own experiments.
The success of the kite experiment made Franklin famous in the scientific world. The Royal Society gave him a gold medal and hired him as a member of the Royal Society. His scientific works have also been translated into many languages. His electrical research has achieved a preliminary victory.
1753, the famous Russian electrician Lichtman was killed by lightning in order to verify Franklin's experiment, and he was the first victim of electrical experiment. The price of blood makes many people wary and afraid of lightning detection. But faced with the threat of death, Franklin did not flinch. After many experiments, he made a practical lightning rod. He fixed an iron bar several meters long on the roof with insulating material, and a thick iron wire was tightly tied to the iron bar, reaching to the ground. When lightning struck the house, it went straight into the earth along the metal pole through the conductor, and the building was intact. 1754, lightning rod began to be used, but some people think it is ominous, and it will bring drought if it goes against God's will. Steal lightning rods at night. However, science will eventually overcome ignorance. After a gust of lightning and thunder, the cathedral caught fire; High-rise buildings with lightning rods are safe. Facts have educated people and made them believe in science. Lightning rods spread to Britain, Germany, France and finally all over the world.
Franklin's contribution to science lies not only in electrostatics, but also in a wide range of research fields. Mathematically, he created the Eight Rubik's Cube and Sixteen Rubik's Cube, which have special properties and complicated changes, and are still praised by scholars. In thermodynamics, he improved the heating stove, which can save three quarters of the fuel, and is called "franklin stove"; In optics, he invented bifocal glasses for the elderly, which can not only see near things, but also see far things. He and hartle of Cambridge University used the evaporation of ether to obtain a low temperature of minus 25 degrees (Celsius) and founded the theory of evaporative refrigeration. In addition, he also studied meteorology, geology, acoustics and ocean navigation, and made many achievements.
1April 7, 790, at night 1 1 point, Franklin died suddenly. At that time, his grandchildren, Temple and Benjamin, were with him. On April 2 1, the people of Philadelphia held a funeral for him, and 20,000 people attended the funeral procession to mourn for Franklin's death for one month. Benjamin? In this way, Franklin passed the 84th spring and autumn period of his life and lay quietly in the grave in the church yard. The epitaph he wrote for himself only called himself "Franklin as a printer" and said nothing about the important positions in his later life. But French economist Turgut wrote a eulogy for him: "I got lightning from heaven and civil rights from tyrants".