MICHAEL FARADAY: INVENTOR OF THE KINETIC FLASHLIGHT

During the early 19th century, newspaper headlines across Europe cried out " Napoleon escapes from St. Elba... Continental armies on the march!! During the same period, these newspapers barely noted Michael Faraday's discovery of the kinetic flashlight. Fifty years later, Napoleon was gone, however due to Faraday's discovery, for the first time in it's five billion year history, the night side of the earth began to emit a noticeable glow!

Bill Hones is an inventor and developer of unique and interesting science toys. His company has just unveiled a new kinetic flashlight named "The Dynamo" based on Faraday's discovery at the recent New York International Toy Fair.

"The Dynamo" is a science toy manufactured with clear plastic housing so that one is able to witness how electricity is created by the use of permanent magnets.

• Fascinating to watch electricity being created by the spinning magnet and whirling gears.

• A practical and useful flashlight without having to worry about batteries.

• Makes a great family project for sharing and making education fun.

• Perfect for your car or around the home.

• Makes a very unique gift.

• A spare light bulb is built into the flashlight housing.

• Slide mechanism to lock handle.

• Attach string to peg for hanging.

WHO IS MICHAEL FARADAY?
Michael Faraday (1791-1867) was responsible for a large number of early developments in electricity and magnetism, although his research was not confined to these fields, but encompassed chemistry and materials. He began his scientific career as a laboratory assistant to Sir Humphry Davy, and went on to discover, among others, the principle of the dynamo, electrochemical decomposition and magnetic rotary polarization, as well as to work on diamagnetism. In chemistry, his achievements include for example the liquefaction of chlorine; he also worked on optical glasses and lighthouse lamps.

He was a powerful speaker and his lectures were popular. Every year on Christmas Day, he presented his Faraday Lectures for Children which were crowded with interested listeners. To honor his accomplishments, a unit of electricity was named after him. The "farad" measures capacitance, an amount of electrical charge. Faraday lived his whole life in England, where he died on August 25, 1867.

•In addition to discovering that changing magnetism causes a current, Faraday developed the dynamo which led to electrical generators.

•He discovered the compound benzene.

•He also came up with Faraday’s law that stated that the number of moles of matter deposited on an electrode depended on the number of moles of electron that passed through the electrode.

•He was also inventor of mechanical refrigeration. He used expanding gases to produce lower temperatures. The same principle that is used today for refrigeration.

•The results of Oersted and Faraday established the relationship between electricity and magnetism. This disprove Coulomb’s assertion in 1780 that there was no relationship between electricity and magnetism.

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