George Alba
Mr.Epley
Science 1st
February 8th 2017
William Gilbert Magnetism and Electricity William Gilbert son, of Hierome Gilbert and Jerome Gilbert was born on May 24th 1544 in Colchester, England. He was taught at St John's College, Cambridge. After getting his Masters Degree from St John's in 1759, he went off to go train in medicine and he traveled all around Europe. This was before he studied magnetism and electricity. In 1763, he was chosen to join the Royal College of Physicians. In 1600 he published De Magnete,Magneticisque Corporibus, and et de Magno Magnete Tellure, and he was elected the president of the college where he served under Queen Elizabeth I as her physician until she died in 1603. Then James VI selected Gilbert…show more content… His books included De Magnete,Magneticisque Corporibus, and et de Magno Magnete Tellure. And these were extremely popular and it changed the way people thought about magnetism and electricity because people believed that there was a large island on the north pole pointing compasses towards it but he corrected them saying that there is iron in the middle of the earth making the compasses point to a magnetic pole towards the north and there is no island attracting compasses. You might be wondering how he found this stuff out. Well, he used a Earth model called a terrella which he conducted experiments with. He is considered to be the father of magnetism, electricity, and engineering. In one of his books he studied static electricity too which he used amber to do which means elektron in Greek so he chose to call this electric force. He also invented the first ever electrical measuring instrument which is used for detecting and measuring electricity especially as an indication of the ionization of air by radioactivity. How it works is when an object with a suspected static electric charge is brought near a metal plate or ball of the electroscope electrical charges will move in the metal and down to the foil leaves which can repel each other. He pretty much made the terms electricity, electric force, magnetic pole and electric attraction. He figured out that if you were to split a magnet in half both ends would still be magnetic and it wouldn't lose its magnetic
