Hello, my name is Mr. Wilshire, and in this lesson, we're going to be looking at electrical discoveries and inventions.

The outcome for this lesson is: I can research some important electrical inventions from the past to the present day.

There are some key words for this lesson that are coming up on the screen now.

The first is pioneer.

The next, electrical.

Then, invention.

Now, scientist.

Finally, engineer.

Don't worry if you're not too sure what some of these words mean.

The definitions have appeared on the screen for you now, so you can pause here and have a recap.

But don't worry because the words will come up as we progress through each slide.

Pause now if you need to.

The first section of this lesson is called early observations of electricity.

Let's jump in.

The modern world relies on electricity.

Throughout history, pioneers and electrical engineering have largely shaped how we live today.

Through their inventions, we use electricity on our streets, in our buildings, in our vehicles, and in the portable devices we carry with us.

Here you can see three images with some examples of how electricity is used.

There's street lighting.

Street lighting's very clever as it's able to come on and off all by itself depending on the light conditions.

An electrical train as well, is able to pull a vast amount of carriages, carrying many, many people.

And a mobile phone is an amazing piece of technology that the majority of people nowadays use in order to get by, communicate with each other, and take pictures.

I wonder if you're used to using any of these electrical inventions in your daily life.

Maybe you regularly catch a train, or maybe you have some sort of device that you use when you are at home or maybe even at school.

What about the lighting in your classroom? Is your lighting able to turn off and on all by itself, or do you need to use a light switch? All of these inventions help make life easier for us as humans.

But electricity is not just a feature of the modern world.

Here you can see an image of some lightning.

Electricity was not invented by humans, it's actually a natural phenomenon which has always existed.

Can you imagine people of the past who are not used to electricity seeing a big ball of lightning like this streaking across the sky.

They're going to think that something pretty amazing is happening.

Scientists try to explain how things work by making observations.

As early as 600 BC, the ancient Greeks made some of the first observations about electricity.

They used a natural material called amber for medical treatments.

Here you can see an image of some amber.

Now amber is a hard yellow material which is formed over thousands of years when a liquid produced by trees is fossilised.

Amber is a rather fascinating looking piece of natural material, isn't it? You can kind of see through it, and if you were to shine some light through it, it would be able to reflect some of the light as well in that colour.

Now the ancient Greeks noticed that if they rubbed amber against wool or fur, small light objects like grass were attracted to it.

Hmm, I wonder if there's a similar way that we can do this in the modern day if we don't have amber.

Now science is about thinking creatively, isn't it? You've got to try to explain what you've observed or how things work.

William Gilbert, who's an English scientist born in 1544, tried to explain the observations that the ancient Greeks had made.

Here you can see an image of a painting of William Gilbert.

He studied amber and the type of electricity that was produced when it was rubbed against wool or fur.

He introduced the word "electricus" to describe electricity.

Electricus means "like amber." So does that mean that the electricity we use, the word electricity, we're simply saying that all of this is possible because it is like amber? Hmm, let's find out more.

The electricity that the ancient Greeks and William Gilbert observed and described is called static electricity.

Just like the experiment I was talking about with the balloon earlier.

Now this is different from the electricity which flows through conductors and makes our appliances work.

Static electricity builds up on insulators rather than flowing through conductors.

It can cause objects to be attracted to each other.

Just like you can see in this image of this poor cat here, static electricity has caused the foam pieces to be attracted to this cat.

I don't think the cat looks too happy about that.

This is very similar to the balloon experiment that you would've done at a birthday party.

Have you ever rubbed it against your shirt and then stuck it up onto your hair? My hair's a little bit short, but even my hair would start sticking up on end because of that static electricity.

Let's pause and think.

What did the ancient Greeks describe which is different from the electricity used in our appliances? Was it magnetism, static electricity, springs, or elastic bands? The correct answer here is static electricity.

They were observing static electricity.

Now when ancient people first made their observations of lightning, they thought it was a weapon used by the Greek god Zeus.

Here you can see a drawing of a statue of Zeus.

Now Zeus was very well known for being able to control lightning.

It wasn't until 1752 that the American scientist Benjamin Franklin carried out an experiment to understand lightning and prove that it was a form of electricity.

Franklin, with his creative thinking, aimed to catch or harness this electricity.

Now all the tales that I know of Zeus involve him looking very, very angry and hurling lightning down at the earth.

He was able to control this form of lightning.

But Franklin, being a scientist, knew that that was possibly more of a mythical story that was created around the character, and he knew that there are ways of capturing natural occurring phenomena.

Now through his work as a scientist, Franklin used his understanding of conductors and insulators to carry out this experiment whilst keeping himself safe.

Of course, yes, you need to make sure that you are safe during your experiment, even if you are working hundreds of years ago.

He attached two strings to a kite; one string was wet and it was made of hemp.

The other was made of silk, and it was kept dry.

Franklin hung a house key from the end of the wet string and held onto the dry string to fly the kite.

Hopefully, you can see what he's doing here.

When the kite was flown during a lightning storm, Franklin observed sparks near the key.

Here you can see a painting of Franklin's experiment.

Now flying a kite in a storm is not really advised.

In fact, the best thing to do during a storm is to make sure that you are in cover somewhere.

Now in this way, he proved that lightning was actually a form of electricity.

He was a pioneer because he was the first one to show this.

His experiment was very dangerous, as I said, and it should definitely not be repeated.

In fact, if you are ever nearby a lightning storm and you see that your hair has started to stand on end and go static, it's probably an indicator that lightning is about to strike and you should get out of the area.

Now Franklin, although he wouldn't have had this kind of knowledge to hand, he was experimenting to try and prove what was going to happen, and of course, he was right, wasn't he? Lightning was a form of electricity and was able to create sparks down at the key on the other end of the bit of string.

So let's pause and think.

Which of these are parts of science? Is one of these statements correct? Are they all correct? Or maybe just two? Have a think.

The correct answers here are A and C: making observations and noticing things, and thinking creatively to try to explain how things work.

This brings us on to task A: demonstrate static electricity using a similar method to the ancient Greeks' observations.

For each of these tasks, you'll need an inflated balloon.

You've got to begin each task by rubbing the balloon against your jumper for 20 seconds.

Hmm, we talked about this before, like in a birthday party.

Unfortunately, we don't have any bits of amber for you to use, but a balloon will work just as well.

Step one, you then hold the balloon near your hair.

Step two, hold the balloon over the top of tiny pieces of tissue paper.

Step three, hold the balloon close to but not touching a stream of water running out of a tap.

You need to take some observations here and think: What do you observe in each case? Can you prove that static electricity is flowing? Pause the video here and have a go at these experiments.

Don't be too shocked by what you find.

So how did you get on? Now you may have made some observations similar to these: When we held the balloon near my hair, my hair stood up and touched the balloon.

Static electricity created on the balloon's surface made the stream of water bend towards it.

And just like the amber, I observed the balloon pick up the tissue paper from the desk.

You may have observed some of these things yourself, or maybe you observed some slightly different things.

Whatever it is that you've done during your task, I'm sure you've been able to prove that static electricity can exist, and it's something that you can generate yourself, in this case using a jumper and a balloon.

I wonder what other materials you could use to have the same effect.

That might be for a different task for another time or some research of your own.

The second part of this lesson is called using electricity to make our lives easier.

Early pioneers' work on electricity aimed to explain what it was and how it worked.

In later years, scientists and engineers realised that electricity could help us, and work began on understanding how we can use it to make our lives easier.

Now you can imagine, hundreds of years ago, people being very suspicious about electricity and thinking that maybe it was something to do with the gods and only that they could use it because it was natural.

But scientists and engineers were able to work out that it could be manipulated and used.

Since the early 1800s, a number of important scientists and engineers have made discoveries and inventions which help us in our day-to-day lives.

Hmm, I wonder what some of these discoveries and inventions are.

So do you know who invented the first battery? Pause the video here and have a think.

Restart when you've done that.

The first battery was created by an Italian scientist.

In 1800, Alessandro Volta made a pile of discs of two different types of metals.

He separated them by pieces of cloth soaked in liquid.

Here you can see an example of that.

There's metal 1 and metal 2, and each little white strip there is a cloth soaked in liquid.

This is just a drawing to show Volta's experiment.

Now when he completed the loop with a metal wire, the metal discs and the liquid began to react with each other, and thus a flow of electricity was produced.

This was the very first battery.

Here you can see the metal wire joining up the two.

Nowadays, batteries are sometimes about this big, aren't they? I wonder how big Alessandro Volta's metal testing experiment was here and what he discovered at the time.

I imagine people would be rather surprised or maybe rather scared of what he was experimenting on.

Do you know the name of the pioneer who worked out how to generate electricity? Pause the video here and have a think.

Restart when you done that.

The name of the pioneer was Michael Faraday.

He was a British scientist born in 1791.

Wow, from hundreds of years ago, scientists and engineers finding out about electricity.

I thought that electricity was rather a new thing, but it seems that hundreds of years ago, people were still experimenting about it then.

Michael Faraday discovered the science behind generating electricity by moving a magnet near a loop of wire.

It was his work that led to the development of the very first electric generator.

So Michael Faraday is the reason why lots of us are able to drive cars around and even have phones that we can use wherever we like.

How amazing.

Do you know who invented this electrical appliance? The telephone.

Pause the video here and discuss.

Restart when you've done that.

The inventor of the telephone was Alexander Graham Bell.

He was a British scientist born in 1847.

He developed the world's very first telephone.

Bell's mother and wife were both deaf, which led him to be interested in sound and the human voice.

In Bell's telephone, vibrations from a human voice were converted into an electrical signal which travelled along a wire to the listener.

In this way, he was able to transmit his very own voice across different distances.

And in fact, this invention was so surprising that people didn't believe that it was real.

A huge step in our use of electricity was the invention of the electric light bulb.

Here you can see an example of such a light bulb.

Do you know the name of this inventor? Pause the video here and discuss.

If you're looking at the light bulb below, you would've seen the name of the inventor.

Thomas Edison is famous for developing the first widely used light bulb in 1879.

Here you can see an example of Edison's light bulb.

Now other types of artificial light had been invented earlier in the century, but it was Edison's design that became popular and the form of the lighting for many years that followed.

Now inside the light bulb there, you can see different pieces of wire, and it's the wire glowing at temperature which creates light.

The bulb around it helps to reflect that light outwards to light up a room.

Now this light bulb would've been very, very big to begin with, but nowadays, bulbs are much, much smaller, and we even have LED bulbs that are even smaller.

About this big.

Now Edison was not the only scientist working on the invention of the light bulb.

Lewis Latimer is just one other example who was an inventor who created an important part of the light bulb, and that was called the filament.

Here is an image of Lewis Latimer.

Another inventor called Joseph Swan was also racing to develop a bulb that people could use in their homes.

As I said before, the first light bulb was incredibly big and wouldn't be so good to put in your living room.

Although originally rivals, Latimer, Swan, and Edison ended up working collaboratively, and that's created the light bulb that we know today.

Scientists and other electrical pioneers work creatively to solve problems and continue to design and make electrical inventions today.

Here you can see an image of an engineer creating a design.

So I wonder, can you think of any new electrical technology that's become popular in your lifetime? What do you think? Have a discussion and restart the video when you've done that.

I wonder what you thought of.

Is there anything new that you are aware of? Maybe your mobile phone is one example.

I know when I was younger, mobile phones you could only really call people, and then you could text people.

Nowadays, you can do pretty much everything on a mobile phone.

So technology has advanced a long way in a short amount of time.

Let's find out more.

When we phone someone, we can use technology to see them as well.

This happens because both sound and video signals are converted into electrical signals and then sent to a receiver.

Scientists have been working on how to do this since the 1870s, and the technology was developed in small steps by a range of pioneers.

Here you can see an example of some visual phone technology.

The same technology allows us to see who is at our doors when the doorbell rings and to check what our pets are doing at home.

Visual technology like this is a really wonderful thing and is certainly very futuristic to people from the past who could only really pay to go and see moving images in the theatre, they would never have dreamt about having even that at home.

Let's stop and think.

Why did scientists of the past want to harness and control electricity? Read the statements and decide which one there matches.

The correct answer here is to use it to help us.

What is the purpose of electrical inventions? Read the statements and decide.

The correct answer here is they make our lives easier.

Although they do show that we are different to cavemen, and they create work for electrical engineers, those two answers there aren't very scientific, are they? Electrical inventions definitely make our lives easier.

So this is the final task.

Use some secondary sources of research here for one of the electrical inventions on the next slide.

You need to find out some different things.

Who invented it, when it was invented, what it is or what it does, how it makes our lives easier, any other interesting facts? The second part of this is, as a class, make a timeline and add to your different inventions to it.

Now there are hundreds of different inventions that all do very useful jobs, so best of luck finding out some different ones and maybe some obscure ones that you weren't really too familiar with.

Here is the next slide, and you can see there are some different things to research here: the mobile phone, the refrigerated vehicle, the home security system, the microwave oven, the safety elevator or lift, and the television.

Have a go at researching those different items and restart the video once you've done that.

Here are some answers.

Your research may look similar to this.

The refrigerated vehicle: it was invented in 1940 by Frederick McKinley Jones.

Electricity allowed air to be cooled, and it was blown in by fans to keep food cold inside.

Now when it was transported, it was able to then be transported across long distances.

This invention was also used to transport blood during World War II.

The home security system was invented in 1966 by Marie Van Brittan Brown.

The security system was made up of four peepholes, different cameras, television monitors, and two-way microphones so that someone outside could monitor and communicate with them, or as an emergency button to send an alarm to the police.

It allowed people to keep their homes safe.

She invented this because she was a nurse who lived in an area with lots of crime.

She wanted to feel safer at home.

A very good reason to invent something.

Here's the second part to this task: finding out where all of these go on a timeline.

Maybe you were able to research some different things and find some more obscure inventions that you can add to the timeline too if you had time.

Well done! So let's summarise our learning.

Throughout history, pioneers in electrical engineering have largely shaped how we live today.

Science is about thinking creatively to try to explain how things work.

Ancient Greeks first made observations about static electricity, which is different to the electricity used in our appliances.

Electrical pioneers learned how to harness electricity and use it to help us.

Electrical inventions make some everyday tasks easier.

I wonder what it is that you are going to use this different information for.

Maybe you are going to go off and be an electrical pioneer of the future.

Whatever you get on with inventing in the future, the best of luck.

I'd be Mr. Wilshire.

Thank you very much for listening.