Go Fly A Kite

Everyone knows about Benjamin Franklin's experiment with the kite. In June 1752, he allegedly tied a key to a wet kite string, went out in a storm, and flew his kite.

Sparks jumped from the key, down the wet string, and to his hand. That proved to our founding father, who had studied electricity in depth, that lightning was electrical in nature.

Later in 1791, Luigi Galvani published his discovery in Bioelectricity. He showed that electricity was the medium nerve cells used to "pass" signals to muscles.

A few years later, Alessandro Volta made a battery by alternating layers of zinc and copper. This voltaic pile gave scientists a more reliable source of electrical energy than the electrostatic machines that had been used in the past.

You can thank Hans Christian Orsted and Andre-Marie Ampere for recognizing the unity of electric and magnetic phenomena called electromagnetism. That was in 1819-1820. Then a year later Michael Faraday invented the electric motor, and Georg Ohm figured out the electrical a few years later.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

From all of these, we get the words most people recognize as having to do with electricity: galvanized, volt, amp, and ohm.

Control Self

Power Quote for the Week

Welcome to Sunday's regular feature. Every week you can look for a witty, wise, or profound quotation from assorted folks about power.

I choose these quotations about power as it refers to electricity, since that is what this blog is about. Sometimes though, I'll select a quotation about power, as it relates to the human condition.

Seneca

Lucius Annaeus Seneca, usually referred to as Seneca, or Seneca the Younger, was a Roman Stoic philosopher and statesman. He was also a writer, a tutor, and an advisor to Nero who eventually had him executed. Seneca was accused, some say unjustly, as a conspirator in a plot to assassinate Nero.

Seneca said: Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.

Bringing Meaning to Madness

I hope you enjoy this week's Power Quote. If you do, let me know, and I'll keep 'em coming.

Death To All Mosquitoes

I started to reflect on mosquitoes, but I decided all I want to do is squash them. Fast. Preferably before they bite me since I'm lying in bed at the moment. Don't you just hate it when you turn the light off, and then you hear that buzz by your ear.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

American actor and writer Tom Wilson was probably right when he said: "Mosquitoes remind us that we are not as high up on the food chain as we think."

Look To Your Windows

I'm always reading tips on how to save on utilities. I mean, as a Business Development Agent for a couple of Retail Energy Providers, I like to post information that can help my clients, both commercial and residential.

Practical? Hmmm

A lot of the stuff I read just isn't practical in today's world. Every ecology article or consumer tips list usually includes things like "line dry your laundry." Who, in this world of two career households, has time to lug a basket of wet clothes out to a clothesline and hang them, then take them in later, and iron them. Trust me, if you line dry clothes, they'll have to be ironed. If you line dry a towel, you can probably use it to sandpaper the deck.

Sure, it will save a lot of electricity, but who has the time or the inclination? Where I live, there are deed restrictions enforced by the community association that prevents you from even having a clothesline with laundry hanging on it. Most large metropolitan areas are like this too.

Grounded In Reality

So, for a tip today, I'll offer this. Think about the heat gain from your windows. Today's home decorating seems to call for minimal window coverings, or what I call naked windows. I've been in many homes that have nothing over the windows except a designer thing at the top. Oh, my wife said that's a window treatment or valance. Some windows have blinds or sheer curtains, neither of which provide a lot of insulation.

Here are some things you can do and they work for business or residential, summer or winter.

1. Install draw drapes that insulate. My wife watches those design programs on TV. She's always raving about the draperies that Candice Olson does on Divine Design, her favorite show. Take a tip from Candice and layer your window coverings with sheers and drapes as she does on many shows. Both of these can be drawn open to get maximum light on cloudy days.

2. If you insist on minimal window coverings, consider getting that tinted solar film. It needs to be applied by professionals but it will reduce your cooling costs.

3. It goes without saying that you should increase your insulation and every year check your caulking and weather stripping.

4. Oh, I've got to say this. Contact me and let me offer you the lowest electric rates possible with one of the Retail Energy Providers I represent.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

There are things you can do to reduce your expenses, but the most important thing is to take action.

The English & Electricity

In the last years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, English doctor William Gilbert studied electricity and magnetism. He made a distinction between the lodestone effect (magnetism) and the static electricity created by rubbing amber. (I talked about the static electricity created from rubbing amber rods last week.)

Gilbert is the one who coined the word electricus (New Latin) meaning of amber or like amber to describe the characteristic of attracting small objects after being rubbed, what we know as static electricity. Eventually, from this, the English words electric and electricity were born. These two words were first seen in print in Thomas Browne's Pseudodoxia Epidemica of 1646.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

As in most scientific advances, it took the combined work of many people in many countries to add to the wealth of knowledge that led to breakthroughs and discoveries.

Burn Candles

Power Quote for the Week

Welcome to Sunday's regular feature. Every week you can look for a witty, wise, or profound quotation from assorted folks about power.

I choose these quotations about power as it refers to electricity, since that is what this blog is about. Sometimes though, I'll select a quotation about power, as it relates to the human condition.

Thomas Alva Edison

Our premier American inventor held, either individually or jointly, 1,093 patents. He also created the world's first industrial research lab.

Edison said: I shall make electricity so cheap that only the rich can afford to burn candles.


Bringing Meaning to Madness

I hope you enjoy this week's Power Quote. If you do, let me know, and I'll keep 'em coming.

El Nino or La Nina

Everyone talks about the heat, but I think the reason it's so hot is the El Nino effect. Someone else is getting our rain, and we're getting all the heat. You know El Nino, don't you? It's always on the news in conjunction with California usually, but it effects a lot more than California.

Depending on where the weather pattern starts, lower part of the Pacific or the upper, it's called El Nino or La Nina. Can't remember which so I'll have to look that up. I may not know at the moment which it's called, but I do know the golfers have given in to the heat. Today when I drove by the golf course, there wasn't a golf cart in sight.

About 20 years ago, it was equally hot here in Texas. Then in 1980, it was one of the hottest summers in history. We were living in Dallas at the time, and the cracks in the ground were big enough to lose a golf club in.

Bringing Meaning To Madness

Weather is cyclical. Global warming may be a real phenomenon though it hasn't been proven yet, but this summer heat in Texas does seems to run in 10 year cycles.