Electro science is the study of the atomic particle the electron. Everything that the electron is involved in can be studied under the subject of electroscience and the electron is involved in a lot due to it’s properties and it’s relationship with fellow electrons both in the same family atom and, neighbouring and visiting electrons that it comes across. The main subject of electroscience is electricity as the electron is fundamental to how electricity works along with it’s conjoined sister magnetism making up the wonderful world of electromagnetism which gives us things like powerful magnets to playful flashing toys. Here at Electro Science we look to explain how electrons create these amazing things.

The universe is amazing – some of it’s magic

One thing we like to point out to make life a little easier. The universe is what it is. We have explanations for much of the universe but not for everything – somethings are a current mystery. One of these mysterious is around something called “spin”. Spin is away of explaining how sub-atomic particles interact and move in certain directions. Why they do this we (at Electrospin at least) don’t fully understand but it happens.

Simplify to explain

The science does get complicated but that doesn’t mean it can’t be explained through simplified models. The simplification does mean that some of the precise detail is lost which can be frustrating if you know the greater detail. For this we apologise and feel your pain.

However, there are two reasons we will do this:

1) science at the atomic level is not highly precise when it comes to the macro world due to the level of uncertainty that comes with working at this level. For example length becomes very subjective as the thing doesn’t stay still to measure between two points; weight becomes tricky as it’s so small or at times nonexistent (does light have weight?).

2) to explain the current thinking of how things work. This is where you will feel the frustration as models or analogy although fair may leave a bad taste in the mouth. For example if we said that a ball on stretched spring is attracted to the middle like an electron is attracted to the centre on atom it would be fair but not the same. For this we ask for your patience and comment as we struggle to explain it to ourselves and then to you.

Ok. Thank you. Let’s get started.

What is an Electron?

To understand electro science we, obviously, have to understand the electron a truly amazing part of the universe. You may have come across the electron in school in a science class or you may have thought it has something to do with electricity due to the ‘electr’ start of both words. However much you know about the electron we’re going to take it back to basics so everyone has a solid understanding of what an electron is, what it can do, what it can not do and, if we get really into it, it’s arch enemy the positron but that’s an story for later.

Before we get into the science and reading part have a think if you have experienced the force of the mighty electron! The most common experience is through an electric shock from touching something leading you to pull your hand away accompanied with an “ouch”. We can easily create this effect at home especially if you have something straight and plastic like a measuring ruler and paper towel, toilet paper or a cloth.

Demonstration: the power of the electron

1. Take the a little bit of paper towel and rip into little and more importantly light bits. Place on table.\
2. Wrap the paper or cloth around the ruler and vigorously rub for several seconds
3. Hover the ruler over the small bits of paper and see what happens

It take a few goes to see an effect on the paper but you should see the paper move towards the ruler – the paper is attracted to the ruler. We have charged the ruler which attracts the paper. You have moved sub-atomic particles from one material to another and used one of the universes fundamental forces to more paper through your bare hands! This may seem like a small achievement but the ability to understand, generate and control electrical charge from the movement of electrons was the defining scientific achievement of the the 19th century that set the foundation for human achievement (both good and bad) in the 20th in the same way that harnessing steam power was achieved in the 18th century.

Charge and the Electron

At first glance the previous demonstration makes sense: rubbing the ruler charges it and then the paper is attracted to the charge. Electricity is great and let’s move on. However at second glance it raises a few questions.

1. Why did the tissue paper move towards the ruler?
2. Why didn’t it move away or at all?
3. Why did the attraction stop after a period of time?
4. Did the paper towel that was rubbed against the ruler also carry a charge? Would that also move the paper?

If you want the answers here they are

1. The ruler had an excess of electrons and therefore an overall negative charge. This negative charge first repelled the electrons of the tissue paper exposing the positive charge of the nucleus which contains positively charged protons. The attractive force between the negatively charged electrons and the positively charged protons caused the paper to move towards the paper.
2. The paper moved due the attractive force of the electrostatically charged ruler. If the ruler was not charged the paper would not have moved. The paper could only move away if it too had a negative charged due to an excess of electrons.
3. The charge dissipated over time as the charge was neutralised through the paper touching the ruler or the excess electrons on the ruler finding a path (current) to ground which is a lower energy state.
4. The paper towel doing the rubbing did pick up a positive charge but this was negated by electrons flowing in from the person doing the rubbing as the towel wants to be neutral. As there is no charge there is no way to move the paper.

All of these answers seem logically enough and are known by anyone who has played with trying to give people electric shocks from nylon carpets. We can up the electrostatic stakes by upgrading from plastic ruler to a blown up party ballon. We get a larger response using a ballon as the ballon is thinner and lighter than the ruler so the surface area is larger to suck up more charge to the point the ballon can stick to a wall.

Tribo called Quest

Rubbing things together to pick up things or stick to things is awesome but how does it help to explain how electro science work? The answer – it doesn’t. In fact it does the opposite – it makes it more confusing as the way we use charge is a little (totally) back to front. To explain this we need to very quickly give a history of rubbing electricity.

Ancient Greece and trying to go out for the evening

As with most things involving science we start in ancient Greece as they liked to talk and write things down. They also liked shiny things and pretty things including amber. Amber is the fossilised form of tree resin that can is often translucent and can be polished – it’s like glass but without the hassle of heating up the sand (it famously stored dinosaur DNA in a prehistoric mosquito not got stuck in liquid tree sap). Due to it’s prettiness the Ancients liked amber in jewellery and, you guessed it, would polish it to make it clean and shiny. The problem when amber is polished, and you guessed right again, threads stick to it and anything else light and hairy causing the polisher to try harder. This relationship between most materials being made attractive through rubbing or friction to leads to the definition of the oldest form of electricity: static electricity. The formal name for generating electrical charge from rubbing two materials is called the triboelectric effect with tribo being Greek for rub. First milestone – rubbing electrics.

For the next 1000 years electrical charge is limited to curious scientist, party tricks, and lightening. The other thing that came out of Greece at this time was a material very much the opposite of amber – a dull, dark grey stone that attracted small metal bits – magnetite.

The early history on magnets is a bit sketchy involving staffs and metal sandals (checkout Thales of Miletus) and the Greek city of Magnesia from where we get the name magnet. What we do know is that magnets were actually useful as magnetite or lodestone (we’ll get to that) can be used to create a compass that provides a direction to North or South useful for a sailing away from a coast (one of the reason why trade in the Mediterranean was so successful at the time and made Greece such a fountain of thinking from people like Aristotle, the Greek philosopher who’s use of logic and reason to understand the world would be the foundation of physics and much Western thinking to around …

Jacobian England Magnetism with a touch of Electricity

…1550s. In the mid-16th century people were starting to test thinking with observations, experiments, measurement and mathematics. This was the birth of modern science and it would be a revolution that would lead to developments in philosophy, art, engineering, leading to empires. It was the scientific revolution or the period of Enlightenment or ‘Age of Reason’ that would change the way human’s tried to make sense of the world.

The scientific approach at this time was defined by publishing the scientist publishing their work for feedback. This was not a cheap thing so those that did published had to have two main things: 1) a source of money, either their own or a sponsor and 2) backing from the establishment be that King/Queen and/or the Church. If you lack either your life is at best diplomatic or worst uncomfortable.

One such person who had money and backing was Englishman William Gilbert. Gilbert was physician to first Queen Elizabeth I until she died in 1603 and then to the her successor King James VI (Scotland) and I (England and Ireland). This platform allowed him to publish his work on magnets notably De Magnete (The Magnet) in 1600. Magnets and magnetism was a safe topic to publish on as it didn’t involve the heavens which got a few people in trouble (one Nicolaus Copernicus) and it was a subject that people were interested in for curiosity but also practical engineering reasons i.e. making better compasses.

The work on magnets included two properties that the scientific revolution were particular interested in. The first was force – the thing that made and changed objects from moving. Force was of particular interest as it could be applied straight away. The other was the idea of ether or “effluvium” an invisible substance that connected things together to allow the force to act. In Gilbert’s work he proposed that the Earth was a magnet itself through experiments using a model Earth or terrella (Latin: little Earth) made from a naturally occurring magnet a lodestone (Middle English for course or leading stone). These experiments showed that Earth could be acting like a magnet which would explain how a compass needle points due North as a ship travels across the seas. The experiment also explained how the compass needle deflects downwards the closer it gets to North an observation sailors used when navigating in the northern seas.

There were a few questions arising from this idea the main one being that the compass doesn’t point exactly North which is known through the North Star (Polaris) which doesn’t move as the Earth rotates daily. But this could be answered with “we don’t know at this time” which was the scientific approach – it didn’t look to explain everything.

Although Gilbert primarily focussed on magnets he also published on the triboelectro (Greek: rubbed amber) effect. Gilbert invented the first instrument to detect static electricity through a device called the versorium (Latin: turn around) a surprisingly easy device to create for Gilbert as exactly the same setup as a compass but the needle is not magnetised so is not affected by magnetic fields but by electrical charged materials such as amber.

Whilst Gilbert did not connect magnetism and static electricity he did use the word “electricus” meaning amber-like or like amber) to describe certain materials that had an effect on a balanced metal needle.

Electricity is the word – an actual word

46 years later in 1646 and Sir Thomas Browne was on a quest to capture the truth and slain the lies. Browne set out to collect, confirm, and publish human understand as it was known at the time with the aim of provide a reference for anyone interested in learning but didn’t want to have to double check sources (it was very much a ‘Did you know …?’ styled book for everyone to read who could read).

Browne included Gilbert’s work on magnets and included the current understanding of Gilbert’s electricus. As Browne collected all the work he termed everything in this field as having the characteristic of electricus or having electric-icity which simplifies to electricity. Browne also came up with ‘insecurity’, ‘polarity’ and 775 other words which we now have in the English language having been added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Electricity final becomes a word and a subject of study.

Electrical Generation – spinning balls

The world of science was making leaps, bounds and jumps in the late 17th century. Sir Issac Newton has first transformed mathematics, then defined the three laws of motion and from it defining physics for 300 years, and publishes work on gravity (1687) and optics (1704) through splitting and rejoining beams of light. It was common that researchers worked on many aspects of discovery at the same including German Otto von Guericke. Von Guericke worked on the subject of air pressure and vacuums (lack of air) notably through joining two hemispheres together via a vacuum and then showing the power of air pressure by trying to get a team of horses to pull them apart. Von Guericke was fascinating with how invisible forces work at a distance such as vacuums, planets, and electricity.

Von Guericke’s fascination with how invisible things work and his skill at demonstration of practical experiments lead to him inventing the first electricity generator in 1663 where a sulphur sphere was rotated within a glass ball until it built up a charge that had an effect be that a spark or even a faint glow (it wasn’t clear that von Guericke was interested in the science more than the show as he was also a passionate politician for this causes). Whatever the reasons electricity can now be generated to levels that could be used explore how it might work. Advances in friction machine increased the level of charge and the control with the main improvements involving the use of glass. The use of glass would be crucial to understanding electricity and the electron (bit of a teaser!)

The Gray Pensioner and the Father of Electricity

The static friction machines enabled scientists of the day to see what effects large electric charges could have on a variety of materials but it was an accidental, super low electrical charge that starts to bring electricity to life not just to those interested but the general public as it started to become useful. It became useful from a man you probably have never heard of with a story that is difficult to believe but one that we are to take a little too much time to explain but hopefully you’ll find this interesting. This is the story of Stephen Gray.

Stephen Gray was an amateur astronomer (1666 – 1736) in the age when the fictional world of astrology based on folklore, legend and myths were transforming to astronomy based on observations, measurement, experiment, and conclusion.

Astrology to Astronomy – measuring the heavens

One of the reasons for this transformation from fiction to fact was the invention of the telescope in 1608 (the microscope was invented around 1595). Before the telescope astronomers could only take measurements and observations with the naked eye with the last one being Tycho Brahe (1546 – 1601) who was able, even without a telescope, to map the stars through massive improvements in the precision of the standard astronomy equipment: the sextant and the quadrant both of which measure the angle between two objects with the horizon normally being one.

Brache’s discipline and excellence in measurement allowed others to use his information to study the sky with greater detail and thought. Skipping over the troubles with the Christian Church astronomers were starting to propose not only how the heavens worked – the planets orbiting around the Sun including the Earth) but why the heavens worked – forces between heavenly bodies causing them to rotate around each other.

Oneof the first to think about heavenly forces at a distance with mathematics was Johannes Kepler (1571 – 1630). Kepler came up not with the idea that the planets circle – the Sun but they travel in an elliptical, like a squashed circle. The level of squish can vary between close to zero (a circle) or a lot depending on how the objects became related in an orbit. Proving this relationship was very difficult as the mathematics was complex and there were not a lot of objects that seem to have a large elliptical orbit. So it remained largely a theory until a ‘new’ comet appeared and both the technology (telescopes) and mathematics were present to test a few ideas and correct a common misconception about comets.

A new comet and a difference of opinion

The development of telescopes had come a long way by 1676 when the Royal Green Observatory opened (70 years for those following along). The observatory build had been overseen by John Flamsteed (1646 – 1719) the first Astronomer Royal quiet an achievement for a self-taught man. Flamsteed was a brilliant astronomer with the same passion for accuracy and precision as Tycho Brahe which meant there was much interest in his findings.

A crucial finding of Flamsteed was the observation of a new comet in the winter of 1680 – 1681. At the time, and quite logically, comets were believed to come in pairs as one would travel across the sky then disappear and then another one would appear several months later. Flamsteed didn’t believe there were two comets but one and he wanted to prove it. If you wanted to prove something you would need a mathematician and the best mathematician who had an interest in astronomy was Sir Issac Newton (1642 – 1727).

By this time Issac Newton had become a renowned expert in the field of mathematics and science, especially in optics and light through his Hypothesis of Light in 1675 and had started to formulate arguments (and they were arguments) about planetary motion and invisible forces that were involved. Taking the work of Kepler on elliptical orbits and his discussion (arguments) with fellow Royal Society member Robert Hooke Newton was starting to put together a mathematical model of how planets and other orbiting objects may work.

Newton wasn’t a particularly interested astronomer who mapped the sky night after night. What he was fascinated in the skys was how the planets and other objects orbiting in the solar system worked like Copernicus and Kepler before him. Armed with Kepler’s laws of elliptical orbits and his previous work on calculus that allowed, amongst other things, for high-precision modelling of objects in motion. The arrival of the comet of late 1680, Flamsteed in post as Royal Astronomer with a new telescope, and Newton what could possibly go wrong?

Do comets bounce?

Flamsteed’s theory on comets being singular objects that appeared, disappeared and then reappeared was due to the Sun was not the same as others, notably his friend Edmond Halley (1656 – 1742). Flamsteed proposed that a comet is pushed back from the Sun via the force of the solar radiation or ‘wind’ that it gives off. This idea today may seem a little crazy – a comet in effect bouncing off the Sun, but from an observational point of view it makes more sense if you consider what a comet looks like to the naked eye and through a telescope.

picture of a comet

For the vast majority of people comets are pictured as white fireballs in the sky with a solid white ball for a head and a white streaking tail out the back. Due to this appearance they are commonly seen collectively with a related cousin the meteor but although similar is appearance they differ greatly in size and distance from Earth.

A meteor is any space rock that enters the Earth’s atmosphere. As it enters the atmosphere it starts to glow as it hits the Earth’s atmosphere at great speed. This glow turns the rock from a dull to a bright light as it speeds its way through the atmosphere creating a streak of light across the nights sky (they are not brighter than the Sun so are not seen in the day). Those big enough to make it the Earth’s surface are called meteorites. So if ever asked the question what killed off the dinosaurs both meteor and meteorite would be correct. The key lesson here is the white ball with tail is created from the friction of the rock smashing through the Earth’s atmosphere – the tail points away from the direction in which it is travelling.

A comet is different and this is why Flamsteed’s idea wasn’t too crazy. The comet is travelling 100,000s of kilometres from Earth through the emptiness of space. There is no atmosphere to rub against to cause the tail like a meteor. What is does have is a different atmosphere that is less concentrate but some energetic – the Sun’s solar wind.

Newton proved that Kepler

1676 – Flamsteed helps Halley publish his first paper on planetary motion

1678 – Halley returns to England and publishes map of Southern starts

1682 – Halley takes measurements of a comet to be called Halley’s comet

1684 – Halley goes to Cambridge to talk to Newton

1687 – Principia first edition was published in 1687 with encouragement and help from Halley

1698 – Halley goes sailing and makes observations on terrestrial magnetism

1705 – Halley publishes date of the return of the comet that was named after him. Didn’t live long enough to see it return in 1758.

1720 – Halley succeeds Flamsteed as Astronomer Royal

Halley’s Comet

Flamsteed and Gray

Two types of Electricity: glass or sticky

Vitreous – glass like, clear

Resinous – from resin, amber like

It’s worth highlighting that the world of optics and lenses was also making big advances at this time mainly because it was such a visual aspect of discovery – you could see Newton split white light into a spectrum and then see it come back together again. The development of glass is crucial in the story of capturing electricity in a bottle.

Lightening in a Jar – the capacity to store electricity

A 100 years after Browne states electricity for the first time it remains an interest but didn’t develop like other areas of human development as it couldn’t really be engineered. Electricity was a mystery that had was seen as two ethers or ‘fluids’. The idea of fluids led to the idea of capturing it in a bottle were other fluids are stored. Using the friction machines to generate charge wires were connected to bottles containing a variety of fluids to try and store the charge (it makes sense).

By 1745 the world had tried many times to capture the two electrical fluids in a glass bottle. Ewald Georg von Kleist from Pomerania (now modern day Poland) came across a classic piece of experimentation: discovering something but not quite understanding how. Von Kleist had managed to capture an electrical charge in a bottle as described above with alcohol being the fluid. He also managed to discharge the electrical charge from a bottle which was very strong (we now know this as high voltage) by touching bottle top and side at the same time. Unfortunately the way Von Kleist explained how it worked lacked the specific detail of how to hold and discharge the bottle so he get’s credit for discovery that electricity can be thought of as a fluid and stored but not for the device that would be use advance the physical understanding of electricity.

1746 – Benjamin Franklin and William Watson propose a single fluid of charge where a build up of charge can be due to an excess fluid creating a positive charge or a depletition of the fluid creates a negative charge.

The history of

The electron never works alone but as part of a partnership with it’s buddy the proton. The electron and proton are attracted to each other like a magnet is attracted to metal.the opposite end. This attraction is called the electromagnetic attraction or electromagnetic force. The

Before we get into the specific of the electron (take it from us it gets very complicated to the point where it’s impractically difficult and theoretical to use) we need to explain the atom. The reason to explain things at the atomic level is understanding electrons means understanding atoms, and elements, and compounds under different conditions such as temperature and pressure. Let us begin.

The Atom

An electron is a fundamental particle of the atom. Atoms are made of three particles: 1) positively charged proton, 2) no charge neutron, and 3) negatively charged electron. The protons and neutrons are bound to each other through a mysterious ‘strong force‘ that creates the nucleus of the atom which is very dense and positively charged. The electrons are on the outside of the atom held in place due to the attractive force or electromagnetic force between the positively charged protons and negatively charged electrons. The electrons can move around the outside of nucleus within defined electron orbits or shells (shells are used to show that the electrons ‘live in a band with a thickness instead of a single orbit like a satellite orbiting the Earth – see picture of atomic electron shell). We’ll talk about electron shells more when we look at specific materials found in electroscience.

Below is a simplified picture of a single atom containing the three fundamental parts. In the picture the atom has one proton and one electron so is neutral. All atoms are naturally neutral as they have the same number of protons as electrons. When the number of protons changes the atom has different physical properties. Different physical properties create different elements in the case below hydrogen which is the first element as it has one proton, one electron and a varying number of neutrons from zero to two (although neutrons have no charge they don’t like being by themselves so the number doesn’t vary too far from the number of protons which they electrically separate.

Before we get on elements there are couple of really important things to point out about atoms that effect the level of electro properties a material has.

1. Most of the atom is empty space.
   If we said the nucleus of the hydrogen atom above was one then the first electron shell would be roughly 125units away. In real world terms you could thing of it as a football being on one end of a pitch and the electron being at the other end (you can pick football, soccer or rugby football – it doesn’t really matter). This means the ability for electrons to interact with the world is large be that through banging into things or forming bounds with other atoms.
2. Protons of one atom do not directly interact with protons of another except in experimental/ weird circumstances
   Chemistry is the study of electrons from one element with another (we’ll keep pressures, heat, and radiation to the physics department). The effect of protons is on the size of electron orbits as the larger the number of protons the greater the nucleic electromagnetic force
3. Electrons can move a lot but only between shells
   The energy levels and accessibility of electrons to the world is huge to the point where the vast majority of chemistry and a fair amount of physics is the movement of electrons not within a shell but when they get excited and move to and from other shells. This movement gives of electromagnetic radiation or ‘light’ as a photon. We’re not that interested in photons but they are super cool.
4. Electron shells have a defined number of electrons
   stuff about electron shells

Elements

With the electrons on the outside held in orbits by the positive proton (electrons are both in orbits flying around the nucleus like satellites around a planet and also not – at the same time – just know they are on the outside for now, don’t worry about how they are held there or if they are moving.

in the middle of atom making up the nucleus with the electrons found at a considerable distance on the outside bound to the

All visible matter be they solids, liquids, or gasses are made up of atoms (we have to say visible because there is a lot of matter out there termed dark matter that we are not interested in).

The number of protons in a

Strong Nuclear Force

Weak Nuclear Force

Electromagnetic

. Many would also draw the electron as if it was a tiny ball orbiting around the nucleus like the International Space Station orbits the Earth. These pictures of an electron are true if you wish to take a simplified picture of the atom where the middle – nucleus, made of two atomic particles; positively charged proton and neutral neutron, holds negatively charges electrons in orbit due to electrical attraction or force of the proton and electron with the neutron minding it’s own business (the neutron is not as neutral as you think depending on the element).

Classical view of the atom

This is all super interesting and highly likely that it is something you already know and is pretty much theoretical. And this is the first challenge of working with electrons and the electricity and magnetism they create otherwise known as electromagnetism (more on that later). What we do here at Electro Science is to try and bring things to life and you can feel the force of electrons in your home with common things around your house.

Experiment: Seeing the power of electrons

Equipment:

1. Plastic ruler (or anything long and plastic)
2. Towel (or any piece of fabric
3. Tissue or toilet paper (or any paper just rip it into small pieces)

Method

1. Holding the ruler rub the ruler with the towel vigorously like you where polishing it for around 5 seconds
2. Lower the ruler towards the tissue paper
3. Observe the paper

Results

1. The tissue paper moved towards the ‘charged’ ruler
2. The longer the ruler was rubbed for the more the paper moved]