Year 4 Visit Benjamin Franklin House Museum

On Tuesday, Year 4 got to visit the famous Benjamin Franklin House Museum to help with learning of our current science topic which is Electricity.

When we arrived at the house, we were welcomed by the education manager Henry, who gave us a brief introduction all about Benjamin Franklin. He explained that Benjamin was born in America in the year 1706 and achieved many incredible things at a young age. Benjamin was known for his famous experiment of discovering the relationship between lightning and electricity. For this, he attached a wire to the top of a kite which would act like a lightning rod. At the other end, he had a metal key at the end of the wire to test if the electricity would travel down the rod. Through his experiment, he discovered the true electrical nature of lightning. He travelled to England in 1757 and stayed at 36 Craven Street, London which is now known as the Benjamin Franklin House Museum. 

We were first split into two groups, one that went to conduct some experiments around electricity and one that was met by Polly (the landlady’s daughter) who gave us a tour of the house. For the science experiments, we got to see how static electricity could be created before getting to recreate Franklin’s famous experiment around the true nature of lightning. Henry used a Tesla coil machine to show us the dramatic power of lighting and some of us even got to help demonstrate which was very brave! On the tour, Polly took us around the house, showing us different rooms that all had a fascinating story. We even got to see Franklin’s office in which he wrote lots of memoirs and positioned his desk close to the window so he could make the most of natural light so as not to waste burning candles. 

It was such an amazing trip! Thank you to the Benjamin Franklin House Museum for hosting us and our parent volunteers who supported this trip! 

Year 4, what was your favourite part of the trip?