WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.700 Welcome back to The Deep Dive. So we've got this 00:00:02.700 --> 00:00:05.240 huge stack of material in front of us, biographies, 00:00:05.240 --> 00:00:08.300 articles, research, and the goal, as always, 00:00:08.400 --> 00:00:10.019 is just cut right to the chase for you. Right. 00:00:10.080 --> 00:00:11.679 We do the heavy lifting so you don't have to. 00:00:11.720 --> 00:00:14.080 We pull out all the key insights, the real nuggets 00:00:14.080 --> 00:00:16.660 of knowledge. And today we are getting into a 00:00:16.660 --> 00:00:20.219 life that, I mean, it fundamentally shaped the 00:00:20.219 --> 00:00:21.800 world we live in right now. We're talking about 00:00:21.800 --> 00:00:24.660 Michael Faraday. Faraday is. He's more than just 00:00:24.660 --> 00:00:27.850 the scientist. He's... really an archetype. When 00:00:27.850 --> 00:00:30.769 you start to break down who made our modern industrialized 00:00:30.769 --> 00:00:33.929 world possible, he's got to be in the top three. 00:00:34.170 --> 00:00:36.229 That's a huge claim. Well, think about it. He's 00:00:36.229 --> 00:00:39.250 the self -made giant who didn't just stumble 00:00:39.250 --> 00:00:42.570 upon things. He invented the very concepts that 00:00:42.570 --> 00:00:45.390 let us understand reality in a new way. He's 00:00:45.390 --> 00:00:48.049 the bridge between chemistry and physics. And 00:00:48.049 --> 00:00:50.170 it's those concepts that we really need to unpack. 00:00:50.350 --> 00:00:52.549 The source material we've got, this really detailed 00:00:52.549 --> 00:00:55.149 biography, it just underscores the sheer scale. 00:00:55.310 --> 00:00:58.770 of what he did. When you find out his portrait 00:00:58.770 --> 00:01:02.090 hung in Albert Einstein's study right next to 00:01:02.090 --> 00:01:04.209 Isaac Newton and James Clerk Maxwell. That tells 00:01:04.209 --> 00:01:06.010 you everything. It tells you everything you need 00:01:06.010 --> 00:01:08.069 to know about the company he keeps. That's his 00:01:08.069 --> 00:01:10.430 legacy right there. And what's really crucial 00:01:10.430 --> 00:01:14.349 for you to grasp from the get -go is that Faraday 00:01:14.349 --> 00:01:17.629 was, first and foremost, an experimental genius. 00:01:18.310 --> 00:01:21.469 He wasn't a mathematician. Right. No complex 00:01:21.469 --> 00:01:24.769 equations. None. His great strength was this 00:01:24.769 --> 00:01:28.730 incredible intuitive visualization. He's the 00:01:28.730 --> 00:01:30.769 one who came up with the idea of the electromagnetic 00:01:30.769 --> 00:01:33.750 field, these lines of force. It was a visual 00:01:33.750 --> 00:01:36.609 idea, a conceptual one. And then Maxwell comes 00:01:36.609 --> 00:01:39.469 along later. Exactly. Maxwell takes these brilliant 00:01:39.469 --> 00:01:44.170 intuitive concepts and translates them. He formalizes 00:01:44.170 --> 00:01:46.230 them into the beautiful, elegant mathematics 00:01:46.230 --> 00:01:49.450 that basically became modern physics. So that's 00:01:49.450 --> 00:01:51.530 our goal today. We're going to trace this incredible 00:01:51.530 --> 00:01:54.930 journey. From, I mean, shockingly humble beginnings 00:01:54.930 --> 00:01:57.629 all the way to the absolute pinnacle of science. 00:01:57.829 --> 00:01:59.469 And we're not just listing off discovers. We 00:01:59.469 --> 00:02:01.609 need to explore the character, the principles 00:02:01.609 --> 00:02:04.209 behind the man that made it all possible. It's 00:02:04.209 --> 00:02:06.209 not just what he discovered. It's who he was. 00:02:06.329 --> 00:02:08.469 Okay. Let's get into it. Let's start right at 00:02:08.469 --> 00:02:10.610 the foundation. Well, the story starts in, I 00:02:10.610 --> 00:02:13.090 mean, just profound poverty. He was born in 1791 00:02:13.090 --> 00:02:15.509 in a place called Noonton Butts. Which is now, 00:02:15.550 --> 00:02:17.669 what, deep inside London? Yes, part of the London 00:02:17.669 --> 00:02:20.370 Borough of Southwark. And this was not a privileged 00:02:20.370 --> 00:02:22.590 start by any stretch of the imagination. Not 00:02:22.590 --> 00:02:26.389 at all. His father, James, was a blacksmith's 00:02:26.389 --> 00:02:29.169 apprentice. The family had moved to London just 00:02:29.169 --> 00:02:33.569 the year before in 1790, basically just looking 00:02:33.569 --> 00:02:36.030 for work. Desperate for better prospects. And 00:02:36.030 --> 00:02:39.180 that financial strain was just a constant. Faraday 00:02:39.180 --> 00:02:41.300 himself recalled, you know, a time in his childhood 00:02:41.300 --> 00:02:44.360 where for a whole week he had just one loaf of 00:02:44.360 --> 00:02:46.919 bread to live on. Wow. So as a result, his formal 00:02:46.919 --> 00:02:50.340 education was, well, it was almost non -existent. 00:02:50.340 --> 00:02:52.939 The most basic reading, writing, arithmetic, 00:02:53.099 --> 00:02:55.060 and that's it. Which makes everything that comes 00:02:55.060 --> 00:02:57.280 after just so much more incredible. It does, 00:02:57.300 --> 00:03:00.000 because he was, to a degree that's almost unwatched 00:03:00.000 --> 00:03:02.400 by any other major scientist, completely self 00:03:02.400 --> 00:03:04.780 -educated. He had to build his entire intellectual 00:03:04.780 --> 00:03:08.419 world from the ground up by himself. And that 00:03:08.419 --> 00:03:11.340 whole process, that self -education, it starts 00:03:11.340 --> 00:03:13.479 in this wonderfully perfect place for a story 00:03:13.479 --> 00:03:16.599 like this. At 14, he becomes an apprentice to 00:03:16.599 --> 00:03:19.340 a bookbinder. George Rebo, a local bookbinder 00:03:19.340 --> 00:03:21.819 and seller. And the seven -year apprenticeship, 00:03:22.080 --> 00:03:24.719 you're right. was the key. It handed him access 00:03:24.719 --> 00:03:27.419 to all the world's knowledge. But he didn't just 00:03:27.419 --> 00:03:29.780 bind the books, did he? No, that's the pivotal 00:03:29.780 --> 00:03:32.120 moment. He wasn't just doing the manual labor, 00:03:32.259 --> 00:03:35.240 which was a very tough job. He was reading the 00:03:35.240 --> 00:03:37.039 books he was handling. And our sources point 00:03:37.039 --> 00:03:39.240 to one book in particular that had a massive 00:03:39.240 --> 00:03:41.199 influence on him. Which one was that? It was 00:03:41.199 --> 00:03:43.780 called The Improvement of the Mind by Isaac Watts. 00:03:44.080 --> 00:03:46.620 The title says it all. It really does. And he 00:03:46.620 --> 00:03:49.520 didn't just read it. He treated it like an instruction 00:03:49.520 --> 00:03:53.250 manual. The book gave... you know, concrete advice 00:03:53.250 --> 00:03:56.090 on how to study, how to take rigorous NAITs, 00:03:56.129 --> 00:03:57.969 how to improve your mind systematically. And 00:03:57.969 --> 00:04:00.229 he just implemented it. Enthusiastically. You 00:04:00.229 --> 00:04:02.729 can see the DNA of that book in the way he recorded 00:04:02.729 --> 00:04:06.069 his experiments decades later. Meticulous, systematic, 00:04:06.449 --> 00:04:08.750 ordered. It was the foundation for his entire 00:04:08.750 --> 00:04:12.139 scientific method. So that curiosity. It couldn't 00:04:12.139 --> 00:04:14.020 be contained in the shop. He starts going out 00:04:14.020 --> 00:04:16.160 looking for more. He starts attending lectures 00:04:16.160 --> 00:04:19.160 at a place called the City Philosophical Society. 00:04:19.759 --> 00:04:22.100 He's just soaking up everything he can, especially 00:04:22.100 --> 00:04:25.660 on topics like electricity. And he was also reading 00:04:25.660 --> 00:04:28.620 popular science books. Yes. He was really inspired 00:04:28.620 --> 00:04:31.660 by a book called Conversations on Chemistry by 00:04:31.660 --> 00:04:34.620 Jane Marset. It presented all these complex ideas 00:04:34.620 --> 00:04:37.500 in a really simple, accessible dialogue format. 00:04:37.639 --> 00:04:41.060 So that idea of making science. understandable 00:04:41.060 --> 00:04:43.579 for everyone, that was baked in from the very 00:04:43.579 --> 00:04:45.879 beginning for him. It absolutely was. And this 00:04:45.879 --> 00:04:48.720 all comes to a head in 1812. His apprenticeship 00:04:48.720 --> 00:04:51.100 is ending and he gets his hands on some tickets. 00:04:51.339 --> 00:04:54.160 Provided by a client, William Dance. Right. And 00:04:54.160 --> 00:04:56.379 these tickets were for lectures by the biggest 00:04:56.379 --> 00:04:58.759 name in British science at the time, Humphrey 00:04:58.759 --> 00:05:01.220 Davy, at the Royal Institution. This is his shot. 00:05:01.399 --> 00:05:03.319 This is the inflection point. And this is where 00:05:03.319 --> 00:05:06.319 you see Faraday's incredible mix of discipline 00:05:06.319 --> 00:05:10.040 and just... pure audacity. He doesn't just take 00:05:10.040 --> 00:05:12.199 notes at these lectures. No, he goes way beyond 00:05:12.199 --> 00:05:15.120 that. He meticulously rewrites them, expands 00:05:15.120 --> 00:05:18.160 them, draws his own diagrams, and binds it all 00:05:18.160 --> 00:05:21.540 into a beautiful 300 page book. And then, as 00:05:21.540 --> 00:05:23.639 a bookbinder's apprentice who's about to be out 00:05:23.639 --> 00:05:26.980 of a job, he has the nerve to just send this 00:05:26.980 --> 00:05:29.779 masterpiece to Humphrey Davy himself. And asks 00:05:29.779 --> 00:05:31.959 for a job. It's an incredible gamble. But it 00:05:31.959 --> 00:05:35.199 pays off. It does. Davy's reply, to his credit, 00:05:35.300 --> 00:05:38.000 was kind. He was impressed. He saw the dedication, 00:05:38.220 --> 00:05:41.899 the skill. But the actual job offer? That came 00:05:41.899 --> 00:05:44.279 about through a bit of drama. A bit of an accident. 00:05:44.420 --> 00:05:47.360 A very dangerous one. In 1813, Davey seriously 00:05:47.360 --> 00:05:50.519 damages his eyesight in a lab explosion. Working 00:05:50.519 --> 00:05:53.019 with nitrogen trichloride, which is notoriously 00:05:53.019 --> 00:05:56.160 unstable. Very. And at the exact same time, one 00:05:56.160 --> 00:05:58.279 of his lab assistants gets fired for misconduct. 00:05:58.600 --> 00:06:00.639 So there's an opening, a very hazardous opening. 00:06:00.899 --> 00:06:04.459 Exactly. And on March 1st, 1813, Davey hires 00:06:04.459 --> 00:06:06.959 Faraday as his chemical assistant. He gets into 00:06:06.959 --> 00:06:08.740 the world of elite science through the back door. 00:06:08.959 --> 00:06:11.759 And is immediately put in danger himself. Immediately. 00:06:12.079 --> 00:06:14.879 His first tasks involved helping Davey prepare 00:06:14.879 --> 00:06:18.180 more of the exact same explosive compound. And 00:06:18.180 --> 00:06:20.259 sure enough, there was another smaller explosion, 00:06:20.360 --> 00:06:23.220 and both of them were injured. A literal baptism 00:06:23.220 --> 00:06:25.600 by fire. You couldn't put it better. Okay, so 00:06:25.600 --> 00:06:27.899 that's how he gets in. But we need to talk about 00:06:27.899 --> 00:06:29.639 something that's maybe even more fundamental 00:06:29.639 --> 00:06:32.699 to who he was, his ethical and religious core. 00:06:33.399 --> 00:06:36.240 This defined everything he did. It's absolutely 00:06:36.240 --> 00:06:38.379 fundamental. You can't understand Faraday without 00:06:38.379 --> 00:06:41.399 understanding his faith. He was a devout Christian, 00:06:41.600 --> 00:06:44.120 part of a very small, very strict denomination 00:06:44.120 --> 00:06:46.699 called the Sandemanians. An offshoot of the Church 00:06:46.699 --> 00:06:49.220 of Scotland. Right. And they emphasize a very 00:06:49.220 --> 00:06:52.420 simple, direct reading of the Bible and a strong, 00:06:52.519 --> 00:06:55.560 strong resistance to accumulating worldly power 00:06:55.560 --> 00:06:58.339 or wealth. He was deeply involved, serving as 00:06:58.339 --> 00:07:00.180 a deacon and an elder. And this wasn't just a 00:07:00.180 --> 00:07:02.459 Sunday thing for him. It drove his public life. 00:07:02.759 --> 00:07:05.459 The biographies all say something like, a strong 00:07:05.459 --> 00:07:08.040 sense of the unity of God and nature pervaded 00:07:08.040 --> 00:07:11.430 Faraday's life and work. He saw science as revealing 00:07:11.430 --> 00:07:14.649 God's work. The laws of nature were divine laws, 00:07:14.930 --> 00:07:17.389 and this led directly to his famous refusal of 00:07:17.389 --> 00:07:20.829 honors. He turned down a knighthood. Twice. Paris! 00:07:21.189 --> 00:07:23.509 Which would have made him Sir Michael Faraday, 00:07:23.509 --> 00:07:26.290 catapulted him into the highest echelons of society. 00:07:26.930 --> 00:07:30.449 He said no. And his reason was just, I want to 00:07:30.449 --> 00:07:34.009 remain plain Mr. Faraday to the end. But why? 00:07:34.620 --> 00:07:37.199 It was purely on religious grounds. The Sandemanian 00:07:37.199 --> 00:07:39.579 faith taught that accumulating worldly rewards, 00:07:39.759 --> 00:07:42.519 pursuing that kind of status, was against biblical 00:07:42.519 --> 00:07:44.860 teaching. So it wasn't false modesty. It was 00:07:44.860 --> 00:07:47.800 a core principle. A deeply held spiritual belief. 00:07:48.019 --> 00:07:50.680 And he was consistent. He also twice refused 00:07:50.680 --> 00:07:52.279 to become the president of the Royal Society. 00:07:52.829 --> 00:07:56.029 Which, for context, is just. It's almost unimaginable. 00:07:56.089 --> 00:07:58.029 That's like turning down the Nobel Prize and 00:07:58.029 --> 00:08:00.350 the top job at a major university at the same 00:08:00.350 --> 00:08:02.310 time. It shows you where his priorities were. 00:08:02.410 --> 00:08:05.370 They were internal. The joy of discovery of service. 00:08:05.529 --> 00:08:08.129 And that principle extended to matters of war. 00:08:08.389 --> 00:08:10.170 When the Crimean War came around. The government 00:08:10.170 --> 00:08:12.329 came to him. They wanted him to advise them on 00:08:12.329 --> 00:08:14.569 producing chemical weapons. And he just refused. 00:08:14.810 --> 00:08:16.850 Flat out refused. Citing ethical reservations. 00:08:16.930 --> 00:08:19.170 He would not use his science to create weapons. 00:08:19.550 --> 00:08:22.149 It's an incredible moral consistency. And it 00:08:22.149 --> 00:08:23.990 even applied to his own finances. Oh, absolutely. 00:08:24.350 --> 00:08:26.610 He could have made a fortune publishing his lectures. 00:08:26.730 --> 00:08:29.810 They were wildly popular. But he refused. He 00:08:29.810 --> 00:08:31.470 wanted people to come and see the experiments 00:08:31.470 --> 00:08:34.129 to experience the science live. He valued the 00:08:34.129 --> 00:08:36.990 discovery over the profit. There's this amazing 00:08:36.990 --> 00:08:39.210 quote from a letter he sent to a publisher. He 00:08:39.210 --> 00:08:42.169 said, I have always loved science more than money. 00:08:42.269 --> 00:08:44.509 And because my occupation is almost entirely 00:08:44.509 --> 00:08:48.440 personal, I cannot afford to get rich. Wow. I 00:08:48.440 --> 00:08:51.799 cannot afford to get rich. What an extraordinary 00:08:51.799 --> 00:08:55.320 way to view your life's work. It is. And that 00:08:55.320 --> 00:08:58.320 character, the principled, humble, self -made 00:08:58.320 --> 00:09:01.440 genius, that is the lens we have to use to look 00:09:01.440 --> 00:09:03.379 at all of his scientific breakthroughs. Okay, 00:09:03.419 --> 00:09:05.059 so when he first starts at the Royal Institution, 00:09:05.220 --> 00:09:07.899 he's Davy's assistant. His world is chemistry. 00:09:08.200 --> 00:09:11.000 That's right. Davy was the leading chemist of 00:09:11.000 --> 00:09:13.799 his day, and Faraday's early work was all about 00:09:13.799 --> 00:09:16.059 assisting him, especially in studies of chlorine. 00:09:16.649 --> 00:09:18.950 But he wasn't an assistant for long. He starts 00:09:18.950 --> 00:09:21.250 making his own discoveries pretty quickly. He 00:09:21.250 --> 00:09:24.330 does. Our sources point to two really foundational 00:09:24.330 --> 00:09:26.549 compounds he discovered that are still, you know, 00:09:26.549 --> 00:09:28.409 incredibly important. Things we'd recognize. 00:09:28.669 --> 00:09:30.929 The names are technical, but the uses are common. 00:09:31.269 --> 00:09:34.610 He discovered hexachloroethane and carbon tetrachloride. 00:09:34.750 --> 00:09:37.289 Carbon tetrachloride. That was a huge industrial 00:09:37.289 --> 00:09:39.590 chemical for a long time, wasn't it? Massive. 00:09:39.590 --> 00:09:42.970 It was used as a solvent, a refrigerant in fire 00:09:42.970 --> 00:09:46.120 extinguishers for over a century. Now we know 00:09:46.120 --> 00:09:48.259 it's pretty toxic, but it was a cornerstone of 00:09:48.259 --> 00:09:51.440 the chemical industry and Faraday found it. So 00:09:51.440 --> 00:09:53.639 he's laying these foundational bricks in organic 00:09:53.639 --> 00:09:57.259 chemistry, but it's his work on gases that really 00:09:57.259 --> 00:10:00.679 marks a huge conceptual shift. Yes, his work 00:10:00.679 --> 00:10:03.500 on liquefying gases was just monumental. He managed 00:10:03.500 --> 00:10:06.059 to liquefy several of them, most famously chlorine. 00:10:06.809 --> 00:10:08.750 And why was that so important? Before this, didn't 00:10:08.750 --> 00:10:11.070 people just think of gases and liquids as completely 00:10:11.070 --> 00:10:13.370 different things? That was basically the idea. 00:10:13.750 --> 00:10:16.649 They were seen as distinct states of matter governed 00:10:16.649 --> 00:10:19.269 by totally different rules. What Faraday showed 00:10:19.269 --> 00:10:22.090 by forcing a gas into a liquid was that they're 00:10:22.090 --> 00:10:24.529 all part of a continuum. He grounded the concept 00:10:24.529 --> 00:10:27.659 of molecular aggregation. Precisely. He established 00:10:27.659 --> 00:10:30.100 that a gas is really just the vapor of a liquid 00:10:30.100 --> 00:10:32.919 with a very, very low boiling point. This helped 00:10:32.919 --> 00:10:36.320 kill off old, outdated ideas about heat and push 00:10:36.320 --> 00:10:39.100 science toward a unified model of matter. He 00:10:39.100 --> 00:10:41.080 unified the states of matter. In a very real 00:10:41.080 --> 00:10:43.480 sense, yes. It was a massive step forward. And 00:10:43.480 --> 00:10:45.799 then, of course, there's the big one. He discovers 00:10:45.799 --> 00:10:47.940 one of the most famous and important organic 00:10:47.940 --> 00:10:51.370 compounds in the world. Benzene. He isolated 00:10:51.370 --> 00:10:54.009 it from this oily gunk left over from the process 00:10:54.009 --> 00:10:56.289 of making illuminating gas for street lamps. 00:10:56.549 --> 00:10:57.909 He called it something else at first, right? 00:10:58.389 --> 00:11:00.529 Bicarburet of hydrogen. But yeah, it was benzene. 00:11:00.549 --> 00:11:03.090 And it's almost impossible to overstate how important 00:11:03.090 --> 00:11:05.809 benzene is today. It's the starting point for 00:11:05.809 --> 00:11:09.730 plastics, dyes, drugs, synthetic rubber. So he's 00:11:09.730 --> 00:11:12.330 giving us foundational chemistry. He's unifying 00:11:12.330 --> 00:11:14.850 the states of matter. And he also invents a piece 00:11:14.850 --> 00:11:17.289 of lab equipment that's probably in every single 00:11:17.289 --> 00:11:19.789 lab on Earth right now. The Bunsen burner. Well. 00:11:20.139 --> 00:11:22.379 An early version of it. But it was his design 00:11:22.379 --> 00:11:25.279 that created a stable, hot, clean flame that 00:11:25.279 --> 00:11:28.000 revolutionized chemistry at the lab bench. It 00:11:28.000 --> 00:11:30.740 made experiments safer and more repeatable. Incredible. 00:11:30.879 --> 00:11:33.360 And as he starts to pivot towards his work in 00:11:33.360 --> 00:11:36.019 electricity, he even helps standardize the language. 00:11:36.080 --> 00:11:38.779 He does. He was responsible for popularizing 00:11:38.779 --> 00:11:41.039 all those key terms we use in electrochemistry. 00:11:41.679 --> 00:11:45.399 anode cathode electrode ion now they weren't 00:11:45.399 --> 00:11:47.779 his words originally the terms were mostly suggested 00:11:47.779 --> 00:11:50.360 by a philosopher named william wewell but it 00:11:50.360 --> 00:11:53.240 was faraday who adopted them used them in his 00:11:53.240 --> 00:11:56.320 published work on electrolysis and really cemented 00:11:56.320 --> 00:11:58.799 them in the scientific vocabulary okay before 00:11:58.799 --> 00:12:01.840 we jump fully into electricity there's this fascinating 00:12:01.840 --> 00:12:04.700 detour in our source material it puts him at 00:12:04.700 --> 00:12:07.139 the very birth of a field that sounds incredibly 00:12:07.139 --> 00:12:10.700 modern nanoscience in the 1850s in 1857 it's 00:12:10.700 --> 00:12:13.259 wild he was the first person to report what we 00:12:13.259 --> 00:12:16.700 now call metallic nanoparticles he was studying 00:12:16.700 --> 00:12:19.659 gold colloids basically microscopic gold particles 00:12:19.659 --> 00:12:22.320 suspended in a liquid and what did he see that 00:12:22.320 --> 00:12:25.000 was so strange he noticed their optical properties 00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:27.220 were completely different from a solid lump of 00:12:27.220 --> 00:12:31.039 gold Bulk gold is yellow and shiny, but his gold 00:12:31.039 --> 00:12:33.460 colloid solutions were ruby red or sometimes 00:12:33.460 --> 00:12:36.100 purple. And he figured out why. He figured out 00:12:36.100 --> 00:12:37.960 that the color changed depending on the size 00:12:37.960 --> 00:12:40.899 of the tiny particles. And that is the absolute 00:12:40.899 --> 00:12:43.720 core principle of nanoscience. The idea that 00:12:43.720 --> 00:12:46.220 a material's properties can fundamentally change 00:12:46.220 --> 00:12:48.740 when you get down to that tiny, tiny scale. Absolutely. 00:12:48.779 --> 00:12:51.399 It's widely seen as the first ever observation 00:12:51.399 --> 00:12:55.039 of what we now call quantum size effects. He 00:12:55.039 --> 00:12:57.500 was unknowingly looking at quantum mechanics 00:12:57.500 --> 00:13:00.200 over half a century before it was even a theory. 00:13:00.779 --> 00:13:03.559 That's just mind -blowing. But, okay, the path 00:13:03.559 --> 00:13:05.850 that made him a global name. the thing that put 00:13:05.850 --> 00:13:08.370 him on Einstein's wall, that really began in 00:13:08.370 --> 00:13:11.090 1821. It started with a simple spinning wire. 00:13:11.309 --> 00:13:13.970 Right. So the scientist Hans Christian Ørsted 00:13:13.970 --> 00:13:16.210 had just discovered that an electric current 00:13:16.210 --> 00:13:19.169 produces a magnetic field, and suddenly the race 00:13:19.169 --> 00:13:21.830 was on. The race to do what? To see if you could 00:13:21.830 --> 00:13:24.090 use that magnetic force to create continuous 00:13:24.090 --> 00:13:27.610 motion, to build a motor. Humphrey Davy and another 00:13:27.610 --> 00:13:29.710 brilliant scientist, William Wollaston, they 00:13:29.710 --> 00:13:32.649 both tried, and they both failed. And Faraday, 00:13:32.649 --> 00:13:34.350 the young chemist, is the one who cracks it. 00:13:34.539 --> 00:13:37.080 He succeeds. He builds two little devices that 00:13:37.080 --> 00:13:39.259 produce what he called electromagnetic rotation. 00:13:39.639 --> 00:13:41.919 This is the first electric motor. The most famous 00:13:41.919 --> 00:13:45.279 one, the homopolar motor, was so simple, it was 00:13:45.279 --> 00:13:48.059 just a wire carrying a current, hanging so it 00:13:48.059 --> 00:13:50.259 could spin freely around a magnet that was sitting 00:13:50.259 --> 00:13:53.259 in a little pool of mercury. Simple. Probably 00:13:53.259 --> 00:13:55.120 pretty dangerous with the mercury. Oh, definitely. 00:13:55.360 --> 00:13:58.200 But foundational. That continuous spinning is 00:13:58.200 --> 00:14:00.799 the great -great -grandfather of every single 00:14:00.799 --> 00:14:04.070 electric motor in the world today. It is. From 00:14:04.070 --> 00:14:06.610 your phone's vibration motor to the engine in 00:14:06.610 --> 00:14:09.610 an electric car, it was the first proof of principle. 00:14:09.950 --> 00:14:13.669 But this huge success, it came with a serious 00:14:13.669 --> 00:14:16.009 professional cost. Ah, this is the controversy. 00:14:16.289 --> 00:14:18.370 This is it. He rushed to publish his results, 00:14:18.429 --> 00:14:20.809 and in his excitement, he failed to properly 00:14:20.809 --> 00:14:23.809 acknowledge the earlier unsuccessful work of 00:14:23.809 --> 00:14:26.230 Wollaston and, crucially, of his own mentor, 00:14:26.429 --> 00:14:29.190 Davey. And in the rigid hierarchical world of 00:14:29.190 --> 00:14:31.710 19th century science, that was a huge mistake. 00:14:31.929 --> 00:14:34.710 It was seen as a major, major slight. It badly 00:14:34.710 --> 00:14:37.009 strained his relationship with Davy, who basically 00:14:37.009 --> 00:14:39.330 accused him of stealing the idea and the glory. 00:14:39.549 --> 00:14:41.210 And what were the consequences of that? They 00:14:41.210 --> 00:14:44.549 were severe. The biography suggests Davy used 00:14:44.549 --> 00:14:47.549 his immense influence to basically push Faraday 00:14:47.549 --> 00:14:49.730 out of electromagnetism research for the next 00:14:49.730 --> 00:14:52.399 several years. He sidelined him. Completely. 00:14:52.539 --> 00:14:55.000 He assigned him this long, tedious, difficult 00:14:55.000 --> 00:14:57.860 project of trying to improve the quality of optical 00:14:57.860 --> 00:15:00.679 glass for telescopes. It was a form of professional 00:15:00.679 --> 00:15:03.419 exile sending him away from the cutting edge 00:15:03.419 --> 00:15:05.879 of physics. So his greatest breakthrough leads 00:15:05.879 --> 00:15:08.750 directly to him being professionally punished 00:15:08.750 --> 00:15:11.830 and stuck on a seemingly dead end project. Exactly. 00:15:11.990 --> 00:15:14.350 But as we'll see, that period in the wilderness, 00:15:14.690 --> 00:15:17.269 working with that heavy glass, ends up being 00:15:17.269 --> 00:15:19.830 absolutely critical to some of his later, even 00:15:19.830 --> 00:15:23.090 bigger discoveries. So that period of being sidelined 00:15:23.090 --> 00:15:25.549 eventually comes to an end. Humphrey Davy dies 00:15:25.549 --> 00:15:28.669 in 1829, and that seems to free Faraday up. It 00:15:28.669 --> 00:15:31.509 really does. By 1831, he's back in the game, 00:15:31.590 --> 00:15:33.350 and he's ready to tackle the other side of the 00:15:33.350 --> 00:15:36.190 coin. He's thinking, okay, if electricity can 00:15:36.190 --> 00:15:38.509 create a magnetic field in motion... Can a magnetic 00:15:38.509 --> 00:15:40.870 field in motion create electricity? That's the 00:15:40.870 --> 00:15:43.509 billion -dollar question. And this is when he 00:15:43.509 --> 00:15:46.070 starts what are famously called his Great Series 00:15:46.070 --> 00:15:49.129 of Experiments. We even have the diary entry 00:15:49.129 --> 00:15:52.649 from October 1831, where he writes he's making 00:15:52.649 --> 00:15:55.029 many experiments with the great magnet of the 00:15:55.029 --> 00:15:57.529 Royal Society. And this leads to electromagnetic 00:15:57.529 --> 00:16:00.210 induction, the principle behind basically all 00:16:00.210 --> 00:16:02.950 power generation. All of it. And he first demonstrates 00:16:02.950 --> 00:16:05.409 it with this absolutely iconic piece of equipment, 00:16:05.509 --> 00:16:08.049 the iron ring experiment. You can still go and 00:16:08.049 --> 00:16:10.490 see the original apparatus today. OK, so walk 00:16:10.490 --> 00:16:13.070 us through it, because the genius here is in 00:16:13.070 --> 00:16:16.220 observing a really subtle effect. It is. So he 00:16:16.220 --> 00:16:19.360 takes this soft iron ring, like a donut, and 00:16:19.360 --> 00:16:22.240 he wraps two completely separate insulated coils 00:16:22.240 --> 00:16:24.860 of wire around it. They aren't touching. Coil 00:16:24.860 --> 00:16:27.539 A and coil B. Right. He connects coil A to a 00:16:27.539 --> 00:16:30.019 battery. He connects coil B to a galvanometer, 00:16:30.139 --> 00:16:32.039 which is just a device that detects electric 00:16:32.039 --> 00:16:34.580 current. And his theory was that when he turned 00:16:34.580 --> 00:16:37.500 on the battery in coil A, the magnetic field 00:16:37.500 --> 00:16:39.139 he created in the ring would just generate a 00:16:39.139 --> 00:16:41.399 steady current in coil B. That's what he expected. 00:16:41.559 --> 00:16:43.679 But that is not what happened. What did happen? 00:16:44.009 --> 00:16:46.470 When he connected the battery, the needle on 00:16:46.470 --> 00:16:49.570 the galvanometer in coil B jumped, but only for 00:16:49.570 --> 00:16:52.409 a split second. Then it went right back to zero, 00:16:52.509 --> 00:16:54.450 even though current was still flowing through 00:16:54.450 --> 00:16:57.450 coil A. So just a momentary pulse of electricity. 00:16:57.669 --> 00:17:00.330 A momentary pulse. And then when he disconnected 00:17:00.330 --> 00:17:03.090 the battery, cutting the power to coil A, the 00:17:03.090 --> 00:17:05.630 needle jumped again, just for a moment, but this 00:17:05.630 --> 00:17:08.970 time in the opposite direction. Wait, so... The 00:17:08.970 --> 00:17:11.009 current wasn't being created by the magnetic 00:17:11.009 --> 00:17:13.769 field itself? It was being created by the change 00:17:13.769 --> 00:17:16.930 in the magnetic field. Ah. When it appeared and 00:17:16.930 --> 00:17:19.609 when it disappeared. Exactly. The key ingredient 00:17:19.609 --> 00:17:23.569 was change, or flux. A static magnetic field 00:17:23.569 --> 00:17:26.430 did nothing. A changing magnetic field is what 00:17:26.430 --> 00:17:29.789 induced the current. That was the gigantic conceptual 00:17:29.789 --> 00:17:32.769 leap. That is Faraday's law. That is the core 00:17:32.769 --> 00:17:35.150 of Faraday's law of induction. And this relationship, 00:17:35.349 --> 00:17:37.930 this idea, was later turned into one of the four 00:17:37.930 --> 00:17:40.549 cornerstone equations of electromagnetism by 00:17:40.549 --> 00:17:42.869 James Clerk Maxwell. And the practical application 00:17:42.869 --> 00:17:45.029 of this is immediate. This leads directly to 00:17:45.029 --> 00:17:47.470 the generator. The electric dynamo. It's the 00:17:47.470 --> 00:17:50.230 motor in reverse. He uses this principle to turn 00:17:50.230 --> 00:17:53.690 mechanical energy motion directly into electrical 00:17:53.690 --> 00:17:56.210 energy. And his first generator was the Faraday 00:17:56.210 --> 00:18:00.250 disk. Also in 1831, it was so simple. A copper 00:18:00.250 --> 00:18:03.130 disc that he turned by hand with a crank, spinning 00:18:03.130 --> 00:18:05.490 it between the poles of a huge horseshoe magnet. 00:18:05.769 --> 00:18:08.430 And that created a current. It induced a steady 00:18:08.430 --> 00:18:10.690 DC current that flowed from the center of the 00:18:10.690 --> 00:18:13.069 disc out to the edge. It wasn't very efficient, 00:18:13.230 --> 00:18:16.230 but it proved the principle. You could make a 00:18:16.230 --> 00:18:18.849 continuous supply of electricity with a machine. 00:18:19.109 --> 00:18:21.369 This is the moment electricity becomes scalable. 00:18:21.509 --> 00:18:23.890 We're moving beyond batteries. This is the invention 00:18:23.890 --> 00:18:26.420 that powers the modern world. The motor uses 00:18:26.420 --> 00:18:29.279 electricity, the generator makes it. Faraday 00:18:29.279 --> 00:18:32.339 gave us both. That said, our sources point out 00:18:32.339 --> 00:18:35.259 a pretty big time lag. He invents the generator 00:18:35.259 --> 00:18:39.730 in 1831, but it's not until... What, the 1880s 00:18:39.730 --> 00:18:41.710 that we see things like the first electrically 00:18:41.710 --> 00:18:44.269 lit public building. Why did it take 50 years? 00:18:44.509 --> 00:18:46.410 It's a great question. It wasn't a failure of 00:18:46.410 --> 00:18:48.529 the science. It was really a failure of materials 00:18:48.529 --> 00:18:50.789 and infrastructure. They needed better wires, 00:18:50.930 --> 00:18:53.569 stronger magnets, more efficient designs. And 00:18:53.569 --> 00:18:55.490 they needed a reason to build the grid. Right. 00:18:55.890 --> 00:18:58.589 Most importantly, you needed someone to invent 00:18:58.589 --> 00:19:01.109 something that used all that electricity, like 00:19:01.109 --> 00:19:04.650 swans and Edison's light bulbs. The world had 00:19:04.650 --> 00:19:07.359 to catch up with his discovery. Okay, let's talk 00:19:07.359 --> 00:19:09.700 about the idea that really got him on Einstein's 00:19:09.700 --> 00:19:12.099 wall. This is a purely conceptual contribution, 00:19:12.140 --> 00:19:15.559 but maybe his biggest. The idea of the field. 00:19:15.819 --> 00:19:18.880 This might be his most radical idea because it 00:19:18.880 --> 00:19:22.819 was so visual and non -mathematical. Before Faraday, 00:19:22.880 --> 00:19:25.059 scientists thought about forces like gravity 00:19:25.059 --> 00:19:28.299 as action at a distance. Meaning one object just 00:19:28.299 --> 00:19:30.440 instantly affects another through empty space. 00:19:30.700 --> 00:19:33.200 Exactly. But Faraday, when he sprinkled iron 00:19:33.200 --> 00:19:36.160 filings around a magnet, he saw those beautiful 00:19:36.160 --> 00:19:39.519 curving lines. He didn't see an invisible instantaneous 00:19:39.519 --> 00:19:43.039 pull. He saw a structure in space. Lines of force. 00:19:43.240 --> 00:19:45.079 He called them lines of force. And he proposed 00:19:45.079 --> 00:19:47.559 this revolutionary idea that the forces weren't 00:19:47.559 --> 00:19:50.180 just in the magnet or the wire. He said the forces 00:19:50.180 --> 00:19:52.900 existed in the empty space around them, transmitted 00:19:52.900 --> 00:19:55.140 through this invisible structure, this field. 00:19:55.359 --> 00:19:57.650 That completely. breaks from the Newtonian worldview. 00:19:58.289 --> 00:20:00.769 Completely. And the mathematical physicists of 00:20:00.769 --> 00:20:03.210 his time, they kind of rejected it. They thought, 00:20:03.210 --> 00:20:05.369 you know, if you can't write a differential equation 00:20:05.369 --> 00:20:08.029 for it, it's not real physics. It's just a pretty 00:20:08.029 --> 00:20:10.539 picture. But he was right. He was profoundly 00:20:10.539 --> 00:20:13.900 right. His idea of the field is what Maxwell 00:20:13.900 --> 00:20:16.720 later mathematized. And you absolutely cannot 00:20:16.720 --> 00:20:19.480 have Einstein's theory of relativity without 00:20:19.480 --> 00:20:22.140 the concept of a field. You need something for 00:20:22.140 --> 00:20:24.599 forces to travel through at a finite speed, the 00:20:24.599 --> 00:20:26.660 speed of light. So Faraday basically changed 00:20:26.660 --> 00:20:29.259 the entire backdrop of physics from an empty 00:20:29.259 --> 00:20:32.700 stage to a dynamic, active field. That's a perfect 00:20:32.700 --> 00:20:34.900 way to put it. It was a complete conceptual overhaul, 00:20:34.980 --> 00:20:38.000 and it took immense intellectual courage to propose 00:20:38.000 --> 00:20:41.009 it. And just to round out this period, he also 00:20:41.009 --> 00:20:43.890 performed another great unification, not just 00:20:43.890 --> 00:20:46.029 electricity and magnetism, but the different 00:20:46.029 --> 00:20:49.569 kinds of electricity. Right. In 1832, he set 00:20:49.569 --> 00:20:51.690 out to prove that all the different electricities 00:20:51.690 --> 00:20:53.710 people talked about were actually the same thing. 00:20:53.829 --> 00:20:55.990 What were they? There was static electricity 00:20:55.990 --> 00:20:59.049 from rubbing things together. There was galvanic 00:20:59.049 --> 00:21:01.869 electricity from batteries. And there was even 00:21:01.869 --> 00:21:04.849 animal electricity from electric eels. People 00:21:04.849 --> 00:21:06.869 thought these were all different phenomena. And 00:21:06.869 --> 00:21:09.329 Faraday said no. He proved they were all the 00:21:09.329 --> 00:21:11.269 same. He showed they could all cause the same 00:21:11.269 --> 00:21:14.549 effects. He concluded there is only one electricity, 00:21:14.869 --> 00:21:17.470 and the different effects we see are just a result 00:21:17.470 --> 00:21:20.289 of varying its quantity and intensity, what we 00:21:20.289 --> 00:21:22.690 now call current and voltage. Another brilliant 00:21:22.690 --> 00:21:25.119 simplification that... unified a whole field 00:21:25.119 --> 00:21:28.220 of study. It was a master of it. So after unifying 00:21:28.220 --> 00:21:30.839 electricity and magnetism and creating the concept 00:21:30.839 --> 00:21:33.960 of the field, Faraday turns to something even 00:21:33.960 --> 00:21:37.180 more. Well, fundamental. He starts looking for 00:21:37.180 --> 00:21:39.619 a connection between magnetism and light. And 00:21:39.619 --> 00:21:41.640 this is where that period of professional exile 00:21:41.640 --> 00:21:44.200 we talked about, his punishment, comes back in 00:21:44.200 --> 00:21:46.839 the most wonderful, ironic way. The work on optical 00:21:46.839 --> 00:21:50.259 glass. Exactly. The heavy lead -based glass that 00:21:50.259 --> 00:21:52.619 Davy had forced him to spend years perfecting, 00:21:52.619 --> 00:21:55.779 he kept a piece of it. And in 1845, he used that 00:21:55.779 --> 00:21:57.880 very piece of glass to make the breakthrough. 00:21:58.180 --> 00:22:00.200 This is the Faraday effect. The Faraday effect. 00:22:00.500 --> 00:22:03.359 Okay, so break it down for us as simply as possible. 00:22:03.359 --> 00:22:06.160 What is it? He took a beam of polarized light, 00:22:06.299 --> 00:22:08.940 light that's been silted so that it only vibrates 00:22:08.940 --> 00:22:11.440 in one direction, up and down, for example, and 00:22:11.440 --> 00:22:13.420 he passed it through his special block of heavy 00:22:13.420 --> 00:22:17.579 glass. And then he turned on a powerful electromagnet 00:22:17.579 --> 00:22:19.880 so that the magnetic field lines were running 00:22:19.880 --> 00:22:21.720 through the glass in the same direction as the 00:22:21.720 --> 00:22:24.180 light beam. And he found that the magnet could 00:22:24.180 --> 00:22:27.039 physically rotate the polarization of the light. 00:22:27.339 --> 00:22:29.700 So the light that went in vibrating up and down 00:22:29.700 --> 00:22:32.680 came out vibrating, say, tilted a few degrees. 00:22:32.900 --> 00:22:36.160 Precisely. He was using magnetism to twist a 00:22:36.160 --> 00:22:39.079 beam of light. It was the first hard experimental 00:22:39.079 --> 00:22:41.980 proof that light and magnetism were somehow deeply 00:22:41.980 --> 00:22:44.259 connected. And there's that incredible line from 00:22:44.259 --> 00:22:46.359 his notebook. Oh, it's one of the best in the 00:22:46.359 --> 00:22:49.490 history of science. September 1845, he writes, 00:22:49.670 --> 00:22:52.890 I have at last succeeded in illuminating a magnetic 00:22:52.890 --> 00:22:56.089 curve or line of force and in magnetizing a ray 00:22:56.089 --> 00:22:58.890 of light. Wow, magnetizing a ray of light. That's 00:22:58.890 --> 00:23:01.009 it. That's the discovery. It's the key piece 00:23:01.009 --> 00:23:03.230 of evidence that let James Clerk Maxwell years 00:23:03.230 --> 00:23:06.369 later confidently declare that light is an electromagnetic 00:23:06.369 --> 00:23:08.970 wave. But that wasn't only discovered that year 00:23:08.970 --> 00:23:11.730 using the same setup. The same setup, the same 00:23:11.730 --> 00:23:15.049 piece of glass. He discovers a totally new magnetic 00:23:15.049 --> 00:23:18.250 property of matter that he calls diamagnetism. 00:23:18.349 --> 00:23:20.569 We tend to think of stuff as either magnetic 00:23:20.569 --> 00:23:24.170 like iron or not magnetic. What's diamagnetism? 00:23:24.509 --> 00:23:27.009 Diamagnetism is actually a very weak magnetic 00:23:27.009 --> 00:23:29.750 repulsion that exists in all materials. Usually 00:23:29.750 --> 00:23:32.349 it's so weak you can't see it. But he found that 00:23:32.349 --> 00:23:34.630 some materials like his heavy glass and water 00:23:34.630 --> 00:23:37.650 and wood were actually slightly repelled by a 00:23:37.650 --> 00:23:40.480 very strong magnet. So not attracted, but pushed 00:23:40.480 --> 00:23:43.200 away. Exactly. It's the opposite of normal magnetism, 00:23:43.240 --> 00:23:46.160 and he was the first to identify it. So in one 00:23:46.160 --> 00:23:48.940 year, with one piece of equipment born from his 00:23:48.940 --> 00:23:51.740 professional punishment, he makes two fundamental 00:23:51.740 --> 00:23:53.700 discoveries about the nature of the universe. 00:23:54.119 --> 00:23:56.000 That's just an incredible story of scientific 00:23:56.000 --> 00:23:58.900 redemption. It really is. And his vision, his 00:23:58.900 --> 00:24:01.180 intuition, it kept going right to the end of 00:24:01.180 --> 00:24:04.240 his career. The sources show that in 1862, he 00:24:04.240 --> 00:24:06.480 was trying to find yet another connection. What 00:24:06.480 --> 00:24:08.900 was he looking for then? He was using a stuctroscope, 00:24:08.960 --> 00:24:11.920 a device that splits light into its rainbow of 00:24:11.920 --> 00:24:14.519 colors, to see if a magnetic field could change 00:24:14.519 --> 00:24:17.119 the color pattern, the spectral lines, of a light 00:24:17.119 --> 00:24:19.299 source. He was looking for what we now call the 00:24:19.299 --> 00:24:22.339 Zeeman effect. He was, but he couldn't see it. 00:24:22.809 --> 00:24:25.289 His equipment just wasn't sensitive enough to 00:24:25.289 --> 00:24:28.190 detect the tiny, tiny shift. But he was on the 00:24:28.190 --> 00:24:31.309 right track. Completely. Decades later, Peter 00:24:31.309 --> 00:24:33.589 Zeman confirmed the effect with better technology, 00:24:33.809 --> 00:24:37.430 won the Nobel Prize for it, and gave full, explicit 00:24:37.430 --> 00:24:40.430 credit to Faraday for having the right idea first. 00:24:40.809 --> 00:24:43.490 His physical intuition was just decades ahead 00:24:43.490 --> 00:24:45.730 of the technology. Let's switch gears to something 00:24:45.730 --> 00:24:48.430 incredibly practical that comes from his work, 00:24:48.849 --> 00:24:51.920 the Faraday cage. Yes. This comes from his earlier 00:24:51.920 --> 00:24:54.660 work on static electricity. He did this brilliant 00:24:54.660 --> 00:24:57.680 experiment in 1843 called the ice pail experiment. 00:24:57.960 --> 00:25:00.200 And what did that show? It demonstrated a really 00:25:00.200 --> 00:25:03.519 key principle. On a charged metal object, the 00:25:03.519 --> 00:25:06.319 electric charge resides only on the outside surface. 00:25:06.619 --> 00:25:08.579 And more importantly, that charge on the outside 00:25:08.579 --> 00:25:11.119 has zero effect on anything inside the object. 00:25:11.359 --> 00:25:14.299 The charges on the outside... basically arrange 00:25:14.299 --> 00:25:17.160 themselves to perfectly cancel out any field 00:25:17.160 --> 00:25:19.339 on the inside. That's it. That's the shielding 00:25:19.339 --> 00:25:21.740 effect. It's why you're safe inside a metal car 00:25:21.740 --> 00:25:24.400 if it's struck by lightning. The car is a Faraday 00:25:24.400 --> 00:25:27.140 cage. And being Faraday, he didn't just write 00:25:27.140 --> 00:25:29.539 a paper about it. He had to put on a show. Oh, 00:25:29.539 --> 00:25:32.759 he put on the ultimate show. In 1836, he built 00:25:32.759 --> 00:25:36.319 a giant box 12 feet on each side, covered it 00:25:36.319 --> 00:25:38.960 in wire mesh, and then he stood inside it. And 00:25:38.960 --> 00:25:41.480 had it electrified. He had his assistants charge 00:25:41.480 --> 00:25:43.170 it up with a massive electric... electrostatic 00:25:43.170 --> 00:25:45.589 generator until giant sparks were flying off 00:25:45.589 --> 00:25:48.089 the outside. And he's just sitting calmly inside 00:25:48.089 --> 00:25:50.430 holding his sensitive instruments, which showed 00:25:50.430 --> 00:25:52.470 absolutely nothing. The inside was perfectly 00:25:52.470 --> 00:25:54.529 calm. He put his own body on the line to prove 00:25:54.529 --> 00:25:57.170 his theory of fields. It was the ultimate demonstration. 00:25:57.509 --> 00:26:00.150 It proved electricity was a force, a field that 00:26:00.150 --> 00:26:02.190 could be contained, not some mysterious fluid 00:26:02.190 --> 00:26:04.450 that could seep through things. It was science 00:26:04.450 --> 00:26:06.950 communication at its most visceral and effective. 00:26:07.369 --> 00:26:10.460 So we've established his genius in the lab. but 00:26:10.460 --> 00:26:13.019 his character really demanded that his science 00:26:13.019 --> 00:26:15.960 be put to public use, and his whole life was 00:26:15.960 --> 00:26:18.920 really centered on one place. The royal institution. 00:26:19.339 --> 00:26:22.500 His dedication was total. He started as an assistant 00:26:22.500 --> 00:26:24.859 and rose all the way to director of the laboratory 00:26:24.859 --> 00:26:28.380 in 1825. But the really key appointment for him, 00:26:28.440 --> 00:26:30.819 the one that let him do his best work, came in 00:26:30.819 --> 00:26:33.740 1833. He became the first Fullerian professor 00:26:33.740 --> 00:26:36.200 of chemistry. And the great thing about this 00:26:36.200 --> 00:26:38.500 position, which was sponsored by this wealthy 00:26:38.500 --> 00:26:41.720 eccentric named John Mad Jack Fuller. Great name. 00:26:41.880 --> 00:26:44.839 Isn't it? The key thing was that the job came 00:26:44.839 --> 00:26:47.720 with a lifetime tenure, but without the obligation 00:26:47.720 --> 00:26:51.220 to give regular, boring lectures. Ah, so it freed 00:26:51.220 --> 00:26:53.660 him up. It completely freed him from the day 00:26:53.660 --> 00:26:55.440 -to -day grind of teaching and administration 00:26:55.440 --> 00:26:57.960 right during his most creative and productive 00:26:57.960 --> 00:27:00.619 years. It let him just focus on research. And 00:27:00.619 --> 00:27:02.119 he did eventually. get a home from the crown, 00:27:02.319 --> 00:27:05.420 right? A grace and favor house at Hampton Court. 00:27:05.819 --> 00:27:08.299 But it was in line with his principles. A practical 00:27:08.299 --> 00:27:11.619 home, not a title or a big estate. A roof over 00:27:11.619 --> 00:27:14.920 his head, but no power attached. And he took 00:27:14.920 --> 00:27:16.599 on all these other public service projects, which 00:27:16.599 --> 00:27:18.700 must have been incredibly time consuming. They 00:27:18.700 --> 00:27:22.660 were, but he saw it as his duty. He did a huge 00:27:22.660 --> 00:27:24.900 amount of work for maritime safety, for instance. 00:27:25.200 --> 00:27:27.700 Lighthouses. Improving the lamps and optics for 00:27:27.700 --> 00:27:29.920 lighthouses, which was a massive deal for an 00:27:29.920 --> 00:27:33.319 island trading nation. And also developing methods 00:27:33.319 --> 00:27:36.279 to stop the copper hulls of ships from corroding 00:27:36.279 --> 00:27:38.599 in saltwater. And his old workshop for that is 00:27:38.599 --> 00:27:41.420 still around. It is at Trinity Bowie Wharf. It's 00:27:41.420 --> 00:27:43.660 where he did the first tests on using electric 00:27:43.660 --> 00:27:46.220 arc lighting for lighthouses. Always practical, 00:27:46.440 --> 00:27:48.740 always aimed at saving lives and helping the 00:27:48.740 --> 00:27:51.740 country. But maybe the most powerful example 00:27:51.740 --> 00:27:54.019 of his public service, and also the most tragic, 00:27:54.220 --> 00:27:57.319 was his work as a forensic investigator. The 00:27:57.319 --> 00:28:00.799 Haswell Colliery disaster in 1846, a massive 00:28:00.799 --> 00:28:04.000 explosion in a coal mine, killed 95 men and boys. 00:28:04.819 --> 00:28:07.119 Faraday and the geologist Charles Lyell were 00:28:07.119 --> 00:28:09.259 sent by the government to figure out what happened. 00:28:09.460 --> 00:28:12.000 And the report was revolutionary. It was. Everyone 00:28:12.000 --> 00:28:14.759 knew that methane gas in mines was explosive, 00:28:14.960 --> 00:28:17.799 but Faraday and Lyell's meticulous investigation 00:28:17.799 --> 00:28:20.119 showed that something else was involved. Coal 00:28:20.119 --> 00:28:22.890 dust. Coal dust. They were the first to prove 00:28:22.890 --> 00:28:24.809 that the fine dust floating in the air of the 00:28:24.809 --> 00:28:28.130 mine was also explosive and had contributed massively 00:28:28.130 --> 00:28:31.069 to how devastating the blast was. That's a huge 00:28:31.069 --> 00:28:34.950 finding for industrial safety. But it was ignored, 00:28:35.049 --> 00:28:37.390 wasn't it? Tragically, yes. He gave lectures. 00:28:37.470 --> 00:28:39.609 He demonstrated how better ventilation could 00:28:39.609 --> 00:28:41.970 solve the problem. But the mine owners basically 00:28:41.970 --> 00:28:46.019 ignored the findings for over 60 years. It's 00:28:46.019 --> 00:28:48.000 a heartbreaking story of scientific truth being 00:28:48.000 --> 00:28:50.559 ignored by commercial interests, and many more 00:28:50.559 --> 00:28:52.900 miners died as a result. And he was an early 00:28:52.900 --> 00:28:54.880 environmental scientist, too. He really was. 00:28:54.980 --> 00:28:57.500 He investigated industrial air pollution, but 00:28:57.500 --> 00:28:59.960 his most famous moment was during the Great Stink 00:28:59.960 --> 00:29:03.200 of London in 1855. When the River Thames was 00:29:03.200 --> 00:29:06.519 basically an open sewer. It was vile. And he 00:29:06.519 --> 00:29:09.119 used his public profile to shame the authorities 00:29:09.119 --> 00:29:11.440 into action. He wrote this furious, brilliant 00:29:11.440 --> 00:29:13.480 letter to the Times newspaper scientifically 00:29:13.480 --> 00:29:16.200 describing the foul... state of the river, he 00:29:16.200 --> 00:29:18.799 was an activist. Let's shift to his other great 00:29:18.799 --> 00:29:22.140 legacy as a communicator. For a self -taught 00:29:22.140 --> 00:29:24.859 man, making science accessible was everything. 00:29:25.180 --> 00:29:28.039 He was a master lecturer, and he's most famous 00:29:28.039 --> 00:29:30.220 for starting the Royal Institution's Christmas 00:29:30.220 --> 00:29:32.299 Lectures for Young People. A tradition that's 00:29:32.299 --> 00:29:35.160 still going strong today. He gave 19 series of 00:29:35.160 --> 00:29:38.519 them himself. And the goal was twofold, inspire 00:29:38.519 --> 00:29:41.299 the next generation and also, pragmatically, 00:29:41.500 --> 00:29:44.440 to raise money for the institution. And his lectures 00:29:44.440 --> 00:29:47.740 weren't just flashy demos. No, they were philosophical. 00:29:48.140 --> 00:29:50.359 He was always pushing the audience to think. 00:29:50.460 --> 00:29:52.420 There's that great line where he says, why does 00:29:52.420 --> 00:29:54.559 the ice float? Think of that and philosophize. 00:29:54.680 --> 00:29:57.599 He wanted to spark genuine curiosity. He had 00:29:57.599 --> 00:29:59.559 his own rules for lecturing, didn't he? He did. 00:29:59.740 --> 00:30:02.619 He wrote that a flame should be lighted at the 00:30:02.619 --> 00:30:04.700 commencement and kept alive with unremitting 00:30:04.700 --> 00:30:07.559 splendor to the end. His lecture on the chemical 00:30:07.559 --> 00:30:10.559 history of a candle is still studied as a masterclass 00:30:10.559 --> 00:30:13.519 in how to explain complex science using a simple, 00:30:13.680 --> 00:30:16.660 everyday object. So after this monumental life, 00:30:16.859 --> 00:30:19.380 how did it end for him? He suffered from poor 00:30:19.380 --> 00:30:22.180 health and memory loss in his later years. He 00:30:22.180 --> 00:30:24.180 died peacefully at his home in Hampton Court 00:30:24.180 --> 00:30:28.099 in 1867 at age 75. And true to form, he didn't 00:30:28.099 --> 00:30:30.980 want a grand burial. No Westminster Abbey for 00:30:30.980 --> 00:30:33.890 him. He refused it. He's buried in the dissenter 00:30:33.890 --> 00:30:36.329 section of Highgate Cemetery, though they did 00:30:36.329 --> 00:30:38.410 put up a memorial plaque for him in the abbey, 00:30:38.450 --> 00:30:41.569 right near Isaac Newton's tomb. His real legacy, 00:30:41.589 --> 00:30:44.450 though, isn't in stone. We started this by talking 00:30:44.450 --> 00:30:46.589 about his picture on Einstein's wall. Right. 00:30:46.809 --> 00:30:49.329 And the physicist Ernest Rutherford summed it 00:30:49.329 --> 00:30:53.269 up best. He said, There is no honor too great 00:30:53.269 --> 00:30:56.049 to pay to the memory of Faraday, one of the greatest 00:30:56.049 --> 00:30:59.170 scientific discoverers of all time. And his name 00:30:59.170 --> 00:31:01.190 is literally written into the language of science. 00:31:01.430 --> 00:31:04.029 It is. The Farad is the unit of capacitance. 00:31:04.750 --> 00:31:07.130 The Faraday constant is a fundamental number 00:31:07.130 --> 00:31:09.710 in electrochemistry. He was even on the back 00:31:09.710 --> 00:31:12.430 of the British 20 -pound note for a decade. I 00:31:12.430 --> 00:31:14.230 think my favorite tribute, though, comes from 00:31:14.230 --> 00:31:16.910 the writer Aldous Huxley. Oh, that's a great 00:31:16.910 --> 00:31:19.170 one. He said, even if I could be Shakespeare, 00:31:19.490 --> 00:31:21.970 I think I should still choose to be Faraday. 00:31:22.269 --> 00:31:24.809 That's choosing the genius who discovers reality 00:31:24.809 --> 00:31:28.069 over the genius who invents fiction. It speaks 00:31:28.069 --> 00:31:31.569 volumes. Huxley saw that Faraday was the complete 00:31:31.569 --> 00:31:34.789 package. World -changing intellect combined with 00:31:34.789 --> 00:31:37.950 unimpeachable moral character. The self -made 00:31:37.950 --> 00:31:40.769 man who unlocked the modern age and then refused 00:31:40.769 --> 00:31:44.130 all the rewards. So when you step back and look 00:31:44.130 --> 00:31:47.289 at the whole picture we've just unpacked, it's 00:31:47.289 --> 00:31:49.430 just staggering, isn't it? It really is. I mean, 00:31:49.430 --> 00:31:51.650 you start with foundational chemistry, discovering 00:31:51.650 --> 00:31:54.349 benzene. You move to the laws of electrochemistry. 00:31:54.549 --> 00:31:56.809 Then he invents the motor and the generator. 00:31:57.440 --> 00:32:00.339 And on top of that, he gives us the whole conceptual 00:32:00.339 --> 00:32:04.049 framework for modern physics, the field. He links 00:32:04.049 --> 00:32:06.369 light and magnetism. He's a pioneer in industrial 00:32:06.369 --> 00:32:08.529 safety. It's an incredible breadth of work. And 00:32:08.529 --> 00:32:11.609 his real genius was this ability to see through 00:32:11.609 --> 00:32:14.710 the complexity, to use careful, meticulous experiments 00:32:14.710 --> 00:32:17.589 and this deep physical intuition, his lines of 00:32:17.589 --> 00:32:19.990 force to see the simple underlying principles. 00:32:20.329 --> 00:32:22.150 He didn't need the fancy math. He didn't. He 00:32:22.150 --> 00:32:23.890 could just see how the universe worked. He's 00:32:23.890 --> 00:32:25.869 the ultimate experimentalist, the person who 00:32:25.869 --> 00:32:27.769 figures out how to make things work in the real 00:32:27.769 --> 00:32:29.789 world. And we talked about that last experiment 00:32:29.789 --> 00:32:32.269 of his in 1862 when he was using a spectroscope. 00:32:32.750 --> 00:32:34.809 He was hunting for a connection between magnetism 00:32:34.809 --> 00:32:37.269 and light spectra. He was looking for the Zeman 00:32:37.269 --> 00:32:39.450 effect, but his technology just wasn't good enough 00:32:39.450 --> 00:32:41.710 to see it. His idea was right, but the tools 00:32:41.710 --> 00:32:44.190 weren't there yet. Which brings up a really interesting 00:32:44.190 --> 00:32:47.329 final thought for you to chew on. Faraday saw 00:32:47.329 --> 00:32:51.230 this unity between electricity, magnetism, and 00:32:51.230 --> 00:32:53.849 light, something just on the edge of what his 00:32:53.849 --> 00:32:57.089 instruments could detect. So given the limits 00:32:57.089 --> 00:33:00.349 of our own technology today, you know, our struggles 00:33:00.349 --> 00:33:03.019 to directly observe things like... dark matter 00:33:03.019 --> 00:33:06.319 or dark energy, or to unite gravity with quantum 00:33:06.319 --> 00:33:08.380 mechanics. The question is, what fundamental 00:33:08.380 --> 00:33:11.299 force or connection or unifying concept do you 00:33:11.299 --> 00:33:13.819 think is sitting right there, just beyond the 00:33:13.819 --> 00:33:15.339 reach of our current instruments, just waiting 00:33:15.339 --> 00:33:18.200 for its own plane, Mr. Faraday, to come along 00:33:18.200 --> 00:33:20.759 and illuminate it with a simple, elegant observation? 00:33:21.220 --> 00:33:23.380 What's the next great unification that we just 00:33:23.380 --> 00:33:27.119 can't quite see yet? A huge question. That was 00:33:27.119 --> 00:33:30.079 Michael Faraday, the self -made giant of electricity 00:33:30.079 --> 00:33:32.589 and chemistry. Thank you for diving deep with 00:33:32.589 --> 00:33:32.789 us.