Joey Green's Mad Scientist

Human Light Bulb

What You Need

Wool sweater
Fluorescent light bulb

What to Do
Put on the wool sweater. In a dark room, rub the fluorescent light bulb briskly against the sweater.

What Happens
The fluorescent light bulb glows.

Why It Works
The friction creates a static charge strong enough to cause the gas inside the tube to fluoresce.

Bizarre Facts

On the 1960s television show The Addams Family, electrically-charged Uncle Fester makes a light bulb illuminate by simply placing it in his mouth.
The fluorescent bulb is more economical and energy efficient than the incandescent bulb, which wastes up to 80 percent of its energy generating heat.
While Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the first incandescent lamp using carbon for the filament, English inventor Joseph Swan patented his incandescent lamp using carbon for the filament in 1878, a year before Edison.
When cartoon characters get an idea, an incandescent light bulb goes off over their heads—never a fluorescent bulb.
Thomas Edison, nicknamed "the Wizard of Menlo Park," was expelled from school in Port Huron, Michigan, after the schoolmaster incorrectly diagnosed him as being mentally retarded. Edison was actually partially deaf, the result of a bout with scarlet fever.
Lightning travels between a hundred and a thousand miles per second, generating a temperature up to 54,000 degrees Fahrenheit, six times hotter than the surface of the sun.

Enlightenment
American park ranger Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning seven times between 1942 and 1977.

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