Q 01/05

Which physicist quit a Cologne teaching post when an 1827 treatise on circuits met a cold reception?

A) Gauss

B) Ampère

C) Weber

D) Ohm

Answer · why

D) Ohm

Georg Ohm resigned his post at a school in Cologne after the cold reception. Recognition came from abroad, when Britain's Royal Society awarded him it...

Q 02/05

Alessandro Volta built the first battery while disputing which fellow Italian's theory of 'animal electricity' in frogs' legs?

A) Amedeo Avogadro

B) Luigi Galvani

C) Lazzaro Spallanzani

D) Evangelista Torricelli

Answer · why

B) Luigi Galvani

Luigi Galvani believed the twitching came from electricity inside the animal. Volta argued that it came from two different metals touching, and proved...

Q 03/05

The Leyden jar, invented independently in 1745-46, was the original form of which component?

A) The resistor

B) The capacitor

C) The transformer

D) The inductor

Answer · why

B) The capacitor

The capacitor began as an accident: an experimenter in Leiden, holding a jar of water charged through a wire, touched the wire and took a powerful sho...

Q 04/05

Michael Faraday's spinning copper disc of 1831 is called the first electric what?

A) Motor

B) Generator

C) Transformer

D) Meter

Answer · why

B) Generator

A generator: the turning disc gave a small but continuous current. Ten years earlier Faraday had built the reverse, a simple motor that turned current...

Q 05/05

The SI unit of inductance is named after which American scientist?

A) Joseph Henry

B) Charles Steinmetz

C) Elihu Thomson

D) Benjamin Franklin

Answer · why

A) Joseph Henry

Joseph Henry was beaten into print on induction by Michael Faraday, then became the first to notice self-induction while working with his electromagne...