KS2 Science: Discovering the work of Michael Faraday

DICK:Today we're going to introduce to you, a real bright spark.

DOM:Yeah a genius who helped us understand electricity.

DICK:Without him, this show, might have looked like this.

DOM:What? No don't do the–

CRASHING

DOM:'Our whole world is alive with electricity. If it hadn't been for today's genius and other pioneers like him we might never have understood it's amazing possibilities.'

DICK:'So who is today's genius?'

DOM:Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Michael Faraday.

MICHAEL FARADAY:You alright?

DOM:'Faraday was fascinated by electricity but what is it?'

DICK:'Electricity is a form of energy. We depend on it for just about everything.'

DOM:'But more than 200 years ago, when Faraday was young scientists were only just beginning to unlock the incredible potential of electricity. Faraday was intrigued so he came to the Royal Institution, the home of scientific research.'

DICK:Don't touch it.

DOM:'Here he made some of his greatest discoveries You can almost smell the genius in the air.'

DICK:Can you smell a genius?

DICK:'Faraday's genius idea was to work out the powerful relationship

DICK:'between magnets, and electricity.'

DOM:'Faraday found out you can use magnets to make electricity. All you have to do, is move a magnet near a wire to get the electricity flowing and… bingo!'

DICK:We wanna learn the basics of electricity today.

OLYMPIA BROWN:Yep.

DICK:So have you got anything–

OLYMPIA BROWN:Here we've got a coil of wire around this tube. Inside the tube we've got some very strong magnets and here we've got a light but there aren't any batteries in that, as you can see. If I just do a simple bit of shaking.

DOM:Look at that!

DICK:So why was this discovery so important?

OLYMPIA BROWN:Well in fact this exact same thing, a magnet moving through a coil of wire is used in gas power stations, coal power stations even wind turbines to generate the electricity that we all use.

DICK:'Thanks to Faraday's generator, electricity can be made on a massive scale so we can all have it in our homes. It's transported by miles of cables, connected up with pylons and substations.'

DOM:'The people who look after the network often have to work with high voltage electricity. High enough to cause a deadly shock. That's where Faraday's genius strikes again.'

DICK:'He discovered people can be shielded from its harmful effects by a metal screen, known as a Faraday cage. live line workers wear a type of Faraday cage as their suit contains metal thread.'

DOM:'So, the linesman suit is a Faraday cage containing positive and negative charges. Positives which are drawn to the electricity from the powerlines and negatives, which are repelled in the opposite direction.'

DICK:'In all the kerfuffle, they cancel each other out. The inside of the Faraday cage becomes a charge free zone. Genius.'

DOM:'So, to test Faraday's cage to the limit,'

DOM:'with a human volunteer - Dick. Our challenge, to see how well it protects him from almost a million volts of electricity.'

DICK:'Our problem, if Faraday is wrong… let's not even go there.'

LOUD BUZZ

DOM:Aaaaahhh!

BOTH LAUGH

DICK:On the head. What will I feel like then, in here?

MALE IN BLACK T-SHIRT:You'll feel nothing.

DICK:At all.

MALE IN BLACK T-SHIRT:Nothing at all. You'll possibly smell something.

DICK:Like what.

DOM:Your own trouser juice.

THEY ALL LAUGH

DICK:'I'm putting all my trust in Faraday's genius discovery. Faraday, don't let me down.'

DOM:'It's working!' All those positive and negative charges rushing around the metal of the cage, are actually cancelling each other out. No nasty shocks for Dick after all.'

DICK:I'm shaking. The strangest part is the smell. The smell of copper just gets really strong.

DOM:That's not copper.

BOTH LAUGH

DOM:Michael Faraday you are an absolute genius. Come on, it's late. Hey turn off the lights will you? NOT THAT ONE!