The word electricity has its origin in the Greek word elektron, which means amber. The Spanish inherited it from the Latin electrum, and the latter comes from the Greek elektron.
Amber is a yellow fossil resin extracted from pine, which attracts small objects when rubbed. Thales of Miletus, a Greek mathematician, was the first to observe these physical properties of the material.
The word electricus was coined by William Gilbert, an English mathematician, in the year 1600 in his book called De Magnate, in which he defined this word as "the property that an object has to attract others when rubbed."
Origin of the word electricity
Although it was Thales of Miletus who initially discovered the property of amber to attract objects when rubbed, it was not until 1646 that the English word electricity was first used by Sir Thomas Browne in his Epidemic Pseudodoxy.
As explained by Sir Thomas, there are objects that have the property of object attraction and others that do not.
In 1733, the French chemist Charles François de Cisternay du Fay confirmed that not only did amber possess this property, but also that glass could attract objects when rubbed.Then he called that produced by amber resinous electricity and that produced by amber vitreous electricity. glass.
In the 18th century, after multiple experiments with electricity, scientists gave the name of a negative electric charge to resinous electricity and a positive electric charge to vitreous electricity. Likewise, they deduced that similar charges repel and different charges attract.
Benjamin Franklin observed in his experiments that all materials possess only one type of electric fluid that can freely penetrate matter, but that it cannot be created or destroyed. The action of rubbing simply transfers the fluid from one body to another, electrifying both.
Hendrik Antoon Lorentz, a Dutch physicist, in 1895, developed the theory of electrons, although he did not coined them in this way but called them "ions".
The term electricity in the present time
The term "electricity" has been used for several years in an unscientific way by power companies and the general public, giving it a different connotation to that of electrical charge.
Electricity is spoken of as electromagnetic energy. The definition has been moved even further, and many authors now use the word "electricity" to mean electric current (amps), energy flow (watts), electric potential (volts), or electric force. Others refer to any electrical phenomenon as types of electricity.
These multiple definitions are probably the reason why the term electricity has fallen into disuse among scientists. Physics textbooks no longer define quantity of electricity or flow of electricity.
Amount of electricity is now considered an archaic use, and has slowly been replaced by the terms electricity charge, then quantity of electric charge, and today simply "charge."
As the term electricity has been increasingly corrupted by contradictions and unscientific definitions, experts today use the term charge to eliminate any possible confusion.
References
- Etymology of electricity. (2017). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Taken from en.wikipedia.org
- Fitzpatrick, R (2017). Electricity._ Historical Introduction._ Taken from farside.ph.utexas.edu.
- History of Magnetism and Electricity. Taken from magcraft.com
- Lee, EW: Magnetism, An Introductory Survey, Dover Publications Inc. (1970) taken from magcraft.com.
- Manchester Community College