♪♪♪
"When we consider the magnitude
and extent of his discoveries
and their influence on the progress
of science and of industry,
there is no honour too great 
to pay to the memory of Faraday,
one of the greatest scientific
discoverers of all time."
That was from physicist
Rutherford Ernest
in reference to Michael Faraday,
the 19th century British chemist,
physicist, and teacher.
Hi everyone. My name is Thaddeus,
and I’m back on the Gadgets Stage
at COSI to tell you about my
favorite historical scientist.
Michael Faraday was born to a
working-class family and was only
given a basic level of education
before being apprenticed
to a book-binder at age 13.
Young Faraday took full advantage
of being around books and
began educating himself,
especially on the subjects of chemistry,
electricity, and critical
thinking skills.
After his apprenticeship ended,
Faraday began attending science lectures
and his enthusiasm and intellect got him
hired at the Royal Institution in London
as an assistant in the chemistry labs.
Now, Victorian England
was highly stratified
by class and with his lower class family
and lack of formal education,
there were significant barriers to
Faraday’s acceptance into
the scientific community,
but eventually his many breakthroughs
and discoveries
would earn the former
apprentice book-binder 
an honorary doctorate
and an offer of knighthood.
Faraday’s list of advancements
are too numerous for me
to rattle off right now,
but I will mention that his discovery
of electromagnetic induction
directly leads to your ability
to be watching this video.
Faraday discovered that the movement
of magnetic fields produces electricity,
and this basic principal is
how power stations
to this day generate the electricity
that we use to light our homes,
run our appliances,
and charge our smart phones.
Hydroelectricity, wind power,
coal power, nuclear power… 
those are all different methods to spin
giant magnets in order
to generate electricity.
But despite that, and many other
important breakthroughs,
the reason why Michael Faraday is
my personal favorite scientist
is because he was also a pioneer in
science education and public outreach.
His list of public service projects
is as extensive as his list
of scientific discoveries.
Most famous of these is
the Christmas Day Lectures.
Faraday began this series of free
and open to the public lectures in 1825,
and the Royal Institution still hosts,
and now televises, them every year.
Faraday himself gave
19 of these lectures,
and the ones that are
most well-remembered
were all about the science
behind a burning candle.
There’s evidence for the use of candles
reaching back to Ancient Rome,
China, and India.
They’re the sort of simple technology
that we tend to take for granted,
but there’s all sorts of
interesting chemical reactions
and physics principles in play
from how the wick is literally “wicking”
the melting wax of the candle
and how the vapor from the wax
is the fuel for the flame, and so on.
Now, during our seasonal
Holiday Lights show,
we tend to focus on the flame itself
and how it’s an example of
incandescent light,
which is to say, light that is
a byproduct of thermal energy.
And while that incandescent light
may appear white to our eyes,
it’s actually made up of
all the colors in the rainbow.
All those different energy waves
in the visible portion of the
electromagnetic spectrum
combine to give us the light we use
in the candles for our romantic
dinners and family holiday traditions.
That’s all for this look
behind the Gadgets Stage.
Stay safe and keep learning, everyone.
♪♪♪
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and comment below.
And for more information on COSI,
Columbus, Ohio's Center of
Science and Industry,
visit cosi.org.
