*Happy 175th Anniversary to Faraday’s Famous Lecture* On December 25, 1848, Micheal Faraday spent his Christmas doing one of his favorite activities: teaching science to schoolchildren. That year, Faraday gave a poetic and beautiful lecture on the Chemistry of the simple candle as he believed that, “there is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy, than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle”[1] This talk was so inspirational that none other than Charles Dickens heard of it. Dickens then asked Faraday for permission to create plays about it for his magazine. It was this collaboration that jump started the popular science genre to encourage people, especially young people, to investigate things for themselves. In 1860, after retiring, Faraday decided to revisit his lecture and expand it into 6 lectures and a book that is *still* used to teach basic Chemistry even though it was published well before the discovery of the electron, the nucleus, the proton or the neutron! The Royal Institution (where Faraday worked) *still* hosts Christmas Lectures. You can watch one today, who knows who you will see. Previously the talks have been given by Nobel Prize Winners William and Lawrence Bragg (Lawrence Bragg’s lectures are fabulous BTW), Sir David Attenborough, Carl Sagan and Dame Nancy Rothwell. And it all started by lighting a candle. [1] Faraday p. 2 “Chemistry of a Candle” https://archive.org/details/chemicalhistoryo00faraiala/page/16/mode/2up [2] CHRISTMAS LECTURES | Royal Institution (rigb.org)
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