1752 In June, Franklin conducted a famous electric kite experiment in Philadelphia and invented the lightning rod. The news soon spread to Britain, and the British immediately adopted the invention and published his paper at the end of 1752. Without Franklin's consent, the Royal Society elected him as an academician in 1753 to praise Franklin's research on electricity.

In addition to studying electricity, Franklin also made contributions to meteorology. In order to find news for his newspaper, he often goes to the farmer's market to collect news. He found that storms often appear in one place, and then there are storms in other places. He thought that the two might actually be the same storm, so he suggested that the storm would move and eventually derive the weather analysis and weather map in the future, which changed the method of relying solely on visual prediction.

The function of lightning rod

Lightning rod, as its name implies, is a device used to avoid lightning. Installing lightning rods on buildings can prevent the harm caused by lightning. In fact, its principle is to attract nearby lightning to itself, introduce grounding conductor after passing through it, and then transmit it to the ground, thus protecting buildings, trees and so on.

Therefore, lightning rods can be installed near the protected objects to prevent lightning strikes, but attention should be paid to the installation distance. The lightning rod should not be too close or too far away from the protected object. If it is too close, the lightning rod is prone to counterattack when it moves. If it is too far away, it is beyond the scope of the lightning rod, and it will not be protected if it loses its function. So this distance can be controlled in the range of 5 to 10 meter.

At the same time, the lightning rod should be installed independently, and some lighting lines, telephone lines and antennas should not be overhead on its structure, which will affect protection. Lightning rod has requirements on cross section and thickness, the diameter should not be less than 8 mm, and the material is also required, which is not easy to corrode, weather and damage. Copper, aluminum, aluminum alloy, stainless steel and other materials can be selected.

Reference to the above content: Baidu Encyclopedia-Benjamin Franklin