Michael Faraday Research Paper

Although both Michael Faraday and Nikola Tesla encountered issues with mentors, employers, and social inequity, they pushed through these encounters with obstacles to explore electricity and its applications while encountering new scientific ideas and exchanging knowledge, which led to economic and intellectual impacts that remain important today. Michael Faraday and Nikola Tesla are very similar people and their lives have many parallels. Faraday was born about sixty-five years earlier than Tesla in 1791. However, this is the end of most of their differences. Despite living in different time periods, both men studied similar ideas in the field of electrical science, and it was the combined effort of these two men that made the induction motor.

The causes behind Faraday and Tesla’s rise are many, and had been accumulating long before either man was born. Several scientists had already made spectacular advances in the field of electricity before Faraday. For instance, according to Alliant Energy (alliantenergykids.com), Benjamin Franklin discovered that electricity has positive and negative charges. This discovery impacted a later scientist, Alessandro Volta, who also decided to study electricity. Volta invented the first battery, a mechanism for converting chemical energy into electricity (alliantenergykids.com). Both of these discoveries led to explorations by Faraday, Tesla, or in some cases, both of them.
Furthermore, several events happened in each man’s life that led to his explorations or his ability to explore.

In the case of Michael Faraday, he made his way into the scientific community by becoming a lab assistant for Sir Humphry Davy, a prestigious scientist of his day, according to “PBS | Einstein's Big Idea | Michael Faraday – Part 1” (PotterNextChapter). Faraday’s opportunity to be a lab assistant fueled his desire to make discoveries and gave him the technology and the reputation he needed to do so. In a similar manner, Nikola Tesla also had an opportunity as a younger, lesser-known scientist to show his talents for science. According to Tesla Universe (Prince), Tesla, after graduating from a university, went to work for the Continental Edison Company in Paris, giving him the resources to develop his skills regarding working with electricity. This job proved to be a big turning point in Tesla’s life, as it led to his relocation to the United States to work for Thomas Edison there. It becomes obvious, due to their similar backgrounds and the science of previous generations, that Nikola Tesla’s and Michael Faraday’s discoveries did not happen by chance, but by the realization of many occurrences

before.
Following his employment by Davy, Faraday went on to explore electromagnetism on his own. Faraday, through his own efforts, discovered electromagnetic induction and the Faraday effect in addition to inventing the dynamo (alliantenergykids.com). Like much of his work, Faraday’s discovery of electromagnetic induction was sparked by the experiments of another scientist. According to the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at Saint Edmund’s College (faraday.st–edmunds.cam.ac.uk), in 1820, Hans Christian Oersted discovered that a compass needle moved when one placed it next to a wire that had an electric current flowing through it. Faraday heard about this experiment and repeated it on his own. He theorized that there must be some “electromagnetic lines of force” emanating from the wire (PotterNextChapter). It was while he was performing several more experiments that Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction. He used this knowledge of electromagnetism, sometimes called Faraday’s law, to invent the dynamo, a machine used for producing electrical energy from mechanical energy. The dynamo would also become significant in Tesla’s work.
Likewise, in a nearly parallel manner, Nikola Tesla left his job working for Thomas Edison to pursue his own scientific inquiries.

Through his experiments, Tesla invented the Tesla coil electric transformer, the technology necessary for long-distance electricity transportation, and the induction motor (alliantenergykids.com). As previously stated, Michael Faraday invented the dynamo, but Nikola Tesla built upon this idea through his work with alternating current electricity and invented the induction motor. According to Martin Doppelbauer of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Nikola Tesla worked intensively on electric power transmission through a multi-phase alternating current system and presented the principles of a multi-phase induction motor. However, Tesla’s induction motor was not necessarily practical. That changed when he invented a transformer to elevate the oscillating currents to higher potentials, according to Maxwell Weyman. A combination of these two inventions could be used for some of the most effective electrical energy generation known to

mankind.
While they were pushing the limits of electrical science, both Nikola Tesla and Michael Faraday encountered many events and obstacles during their lives, some beneficial and others detrimental. First of all, both men held jobs that were influential in their lives, though Tesla spent more time at different jobs than Faraday. Faraday’s lone significant employment opportunity was incredibly significant and advantageous all on its own. This was the aforementioned position as lab assistant to Sir Davy. Davy had injured his eye during an experiment, and, when looking for a lab assistant, recalled a young man named Faraday, who had taken notes at one of his lectures and bound them into a book (faraday.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk). Tesla’s first job related to science and his discoveries came when Thomas Edison hired him. According to Wikipedia, this occupation was not quite as helpful for Tesla as Faraday’s was for him, as he ended up being cheated out of his payment after having completed the task assigned to him. This would become a trend in Tesla’s life, as Tesla endured a similar situation when working for J.P. Morgan. Finally, Tesla found a fair, honest employer in George Westinghouse, for whom he worked inventing and overseeing the construction of power plants and lighting systems, according to Biography.com (biography.com). These financial encounters with other individuals shaped Michael Faraday’s and Nikola Tesla’s personal scientific explorations.
Although not necessarily as impactful, Tesla and Faraday each had encounters with social matters, particularly religion. Michael Faraday was a very religious person. This is evident because his reasoning for exploring science was his feeling that it would fulfill his religious obligations (PotterNextChapter). His religion affected other aspects of his life as well. For instance, he turned down a knighthood on religious grounds (wikipedia.org). Nikola Tesla was quite the opposite of Michael Faraday regarding religion, as he himself was not religious. According to George Sylvester Viereck, Tesla stated, “While I am not a believer in the orthodox sense, I commend religion, first, because every individual should have some ideal—religious, artistic, scientific, or humanitarian—to give significance to his life. Second, because all the great religions contain wise prescriptions relating to the conduct of life, which hold good now as they did when they were promulgated.” This quote shows how Tesla, although he was not religious himself, supported the idea of religion in society.
As for intellectual encounters, Tesla and Faraday had many. One could say that Faraday laid the foundation for Tesla to build a house because Tesla used many of Faraday’s scientific discoveries in his inventions. First of all, as previously, stated Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction. Likewise, he used his knowledge of electromagnetic induction to invent the dynamo, the first rudimentary electric motor (alliantenergykids.com). Faraday’s motor ran on direct current electricity, however, and therefore left room for improvement. According to Kenneth M. Sweezey of JSTOR Science, Nikola Tesla first encountered this opportunity for improvement as a student when a teacher was demonstrating a dynamo; he noticed that the brushes caused sparking, and thought that there might be a way to create a motor without brushes. This idea later became the induction motor, which allowed for the conversion of alternating current electrical energy to mechanical energy and back, making the transportation of electricity much more practical.
As a result of Michael Faraday’s and Nikola Tesla’s exchange of ideas with other scientists, modern scientists have made many subsequent innovations upon their ideas. For example, nuclear power plants use technology invented by Tesla to produce power; however, they do so by means of nuclear fission, an innovation on Tesla’s ideas (wikipedia.org). This was not the only impact Tesla had on electricity production. On a similar note, the Niagara Falls hydroelectric plant built by Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse set a precedent for hydroelectric plants, according to Teen Ink (teenink.com). Moreover, the impacts of these men’s studies is not just intellectual, but enters other categories as well. For instance, Michael Faraday attempted to use his respect as a scientist to initiate social change. According to Alan Hirshfeld, Faraday once wrote a letter to The Times, a local newspaper, to express his disgust at the state of the Thames River, for it had been polluted beyond recognition. This exchange of words from Faraday to the public demonstrates the efforts of Faraday and Tesla to improve the world.
In conclusion, despite encounters with uncooperative mentors, employers, and social inequality, Nikola Tesla and Michael Faraday overcame these problems to explore electromagnetism and electric motors while encountering new scientific theories and exchanging ideas, which led to economic and intellectual impacts that have been significant ever since. Both these men conquered tough social situations, with Faraday being poor and Tesla and immigrant. They both took every opportunity they were given to better themselves and expand scientific knowledge. Lastly, because of the combined efforts of these men and their exchanges with other scientists and inventors, the world has been shaped to be powered by electricity, a concept that continues to develop.