Humphry Davy Biography: How Doing Drugs Led to Sucess & the Arc Lamp

Humphry Davy Biography: a story of pre-Victorian drug parties, science superstars, giant stinky batteries, & chemistry "for the female sex". Check it out!
The modern picture of a bright arc lamp is taken with permission from an art installation called "Gravity of Light" by the very nice artists Doug and Mike Starn:
www.dmstarn.com/gravity_of_lig...
And, as usual, the music comes from the fabulous Kim Nalley.

[@pixxelwizzard]

Can I just say, your skill in crafting a lecture and your writing abilities are phenomenal. Then, to string them all together in a logical and compelling series is quite frankly mind boggling. This is a master class, one that people pay hundreds of dollars for. I feel like a little boy filled with the wonder of new and exciting discoveries. Thank you!

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

I have been reading all of your comments with joy. Thank you 😊

[@johndavy2309]

Thank you for making this great video!!, as a direct descendent of Sir Humphry Davy’s brother, I love watching videos about our most impressive family history. Great job!

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

That is so cool! Do you know if anyone has a picture of your great, great, great Aunt? Inquiring minds want to know. (I think Davy is fascinating and got such a bad rep in the "Einstein's Big Idea" video, if you have seen that). My next video about Faraday's beginnings mentions him a lot too but from Faraday's point of view. I hope that it treats both men fairly.

[@fabriziot1467]

This channel should have 1000 time more subscribers. It's fantastic. Kathy you did an astonishing job! Thank you very much.

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

Fabrizio T That was such a lovely complement, thank you

[@jimmycedillo1585]

Dang it! Your cliffhangers are making me binge watch your videos!

[@mloving4644]

Im taking Chemistry B and watching your videos after lessons is extremely helpful and insightful. I hope you do well in your passions, as you have encouraged me to do well in mine.

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

aww, that is so lovely. Keep on going. By the way, you might like my videos on Rutherford and on Spectroscopy, they involve Chemistry concepts. Cheers, Kathy

[@julianramirez4465]

Hey Kathy i love u, ur videos are super fun and educative. I think i'm five or six videos away from watching all of your videos. Loved the AC-DC videos, and the radio ones. Keep up.

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

Julian Ramírez thanks Julian! You know radio was my weakest area before I started and now I feel like it is one of my strongest! Crazy eh?

[@sigmabonds2012]

Amazing content! Thank you for making these informative videos about history of science.

[@bobconnor1210]

The carbon arc system was widely used in such applications as big search lights, spotlights, movie projectors and in carbon arc welding and cutting. Davy left an impressive list of inventions including the explosion-proof safety lamp for miners.

[@huangchao5164]

vivid stories make science interesting to lovable, great!

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

So glad you liked it. I love Davy - wished his story was better known.

[@adhipmitra]

Excellent as always

[@citrine615]

Great video, and lovely makeover!

[@mnada72]

Thank you, your episodes are of much value. It's very important to know about the history besides the technical 👍

[@skillamator777]

Fantastic video, I love the passion you bring to the subject. Made me really invested in his story

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

So glad.

[@zachreyhelmberger894]

Wonderful connections!

[@marin4311]

Continue the good job, Kathy!

[@GunninRebel55]

You're brilliant and your videos are very informative. I stumbled upon your Ben Franklin/Kite vid yesterday and I've now watched from #1 up to this point, and I'm still going.. I appreciate all your knowledge and the delightful way you teach. I love when you say "Ready? Let's go!" :-) Thanks a million!

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

So glad you like them. In my opinion, you are just getting to the good stuff.

[@GunninRebel55]

Kathy Loves Physics & History I totally believe you. The series is getting better and better as it progresses. I really love the way it’s all connected. You illustrate how everybody contributed something to, and for, the overall harnessing, development, and improvements of electricity and the ways in which it can be applied. You’ve laid it out beautifully.

[@purplealice]

I can't think about Humphrey Davy without remembering the "clerihew" about him: Sir Humphry Davy Detested gravy. He lived in the odium Of having discovered sodium

[@graemelaubach3106]

These videos are so wonderfully interesting and entertaining. You are amazing.

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

Thank you 😊

[@billygamer3941]

I am reading Jane Marcet's "Conversations on Chemistry". It is a glimpse of past thinking and facts in the language of the time.

[@vinceypma8962]

Love you, Kathy.

[@bobbymcdingdong]

Amazing!

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

Thanks. This one (and the Volta one) were real surprises to me as I thought I knew about Davy from a video and the real guy was way more interesting and appealing than I expected.

[@canietoa]

Amazing videos. Thanks a lot

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

So glad you liked it. I wish this video did better as I just adore Davy and wish he was better known.

[@davidfurse-roberts-ws1gp]

Love all your lectures that combine history and science. Just a point, arc lamps were used well into the 20th century - I believe all the search lights in WW2 used them and also cinema projectors up until the 1960s (when they were replaced by xenon bulbs) as they produced a very pure white light.

[@gerardconway4927]

Probably the best science video s on the internet

[@GammaDigamma]

9:08 The chemical that exploded was nitrogen trichloride obtained when ammonia reacts with excess of chlorine...

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

I had no idea! Thanks

[@johnpeter4184]

Moving right along Kathy. You are informative and fun.. My interest is held my bs filter is off. In my childhood powdered calcium carbide was thrown on a wet patio followed by a match. Eyes were glued shut by melted eye lashes. Eyebrows gone hair singed real good. I was 10 at the time. 😃 Carbide cannons are still for sale.

[@BrandonHall916]

I love your videos

[@jamesallen4708]

Loved finding this. Got a question about Thomas Beddoes' use of hydrogen to treat measles. Know anything more about it?

[@xenocampanoli815]

Arc lamps were used by projectionists as recently as the early 80s. I remember our projectionists in Tacoma having to replace the carbons, and I remember the special generators in the basement they needed for the power. This was at the old Tacoma Rialto and Roxy (nowadays Pantages) theatres, which were showing popular movies.

[@Rabblewitz]

My daughters boyfriend works on powerlines an the like, and was telling me that one of the local towns in the area still uses arc lamps for their street lights. Apparently, it's pretty difficult to get replacement parts when needed, and things often need to be custom made. 🙂

[@John.Mann.1941]

I loved this video, as with all yours. I didn't know about Davy's connection to laughing gas before. I learned about him in school as the inventor of the safety lamp for coal miners - not an important contribution to science but a HUGE contribution to mining safety.

[@dosomething3]

mesmerizing 😮

Arc lamps were actually still used in filmprojectors and followspots when I was young in the 1970s

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

Good point

[@icedteacatfish]

nice!

[@peters972]

Very illuminating! Thanks

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

You are welcome glad you liked it

[@peters972]

@@Kathy_Loves_Physics Kathy, I had an idea that you may be interested in both for your channel and as a neat experiment. You may have seen a video of a guy who demonstrates gravitational forces in space by rolling steel balls onto a trampoline frame covered in a latex type cloth? That experiment is supposed to demonstrate the fabric of time/space and diagrams of Einstein’s theory take that form, more-or-less a large object in space curving a 2 dimensional grid. He had several million views so I guess it was quite a hit! The idea is to show this in 3 dimensions based on a Galileo thermometer type apparatus. As I understand it, that thermometer has floats in it that gravitate to a certain depth of fluid depending on the temperature of the fluid they are in. So perhaps if you take a large square sided glass bowl filled with this liquid and put a heat source in the center, like a tea element. Looking down on the bowl, the central part should be slightly warmer than the walls of the bowl. Perhaps rotate the liquid slowly. The Galileo floats should find a spot HORIZONTALLY comfortable for them between the walls of the bowl and the element (which is representing the mass full object in space). This should demonstrate that space time works more like a viscosity (3D) than warping (2D). Thank you! I hope my little comments on your videos have not spammed you I am watching my way through them and it helps me remember where I was. Have a nice day. Pete.

[@scummybabyelephant6094]

Wow your videos are so cool!

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

Thanks - I love Davy's story.

[@norvinmorrow6938]

Love your videos.... however none of my chores are getting done...

[@kavithajames511]

Interesting!....

[@15837pawimomo]

I like your content

[@realvanman1]

I believe that arc lamps were in general use far beyond 1900 as the concentrated tungsten filament didn’t debut until ~1913, I believe. I’m pretty sure they were used in searchlights through WWII and beyond. In some cases WELL beyond, seeing new, second lives for advertising purposes.

[@toddb930]

Maybe I could finally understand chemistry if I read that book. 🤔

[@nicolasuribestanko]

Kathy Loves Physics and History, but I LOVE KATHY!!!! Please forgive my impertinence. I'm a 73 year-old retiree who has just been bitten by the Love Bug, and I'm singing Love Potion Number 9.

[@GaryBickford]

In addition to projection lamps, arc lights were the basis of the searchlights used in world war II to spot and target enemy airplanes over cities, and through my childhood to announce the location of circuses and traveling fairs. As recently as a dozen years ago I saw some being used by car dealers to light up the sky to lure people in for their Fabulous Sales!😂

[@michaelgonzalez9058]

Humphrey davi electron Desiner

[@GaryBickford]

I'm now curious about what the path from arc lights to arc welding might have been. Someone must have observed that unlike carbon tips, metal points and surfaces would easily melt under the arc, and material would flow opposite the direction of the current. Thus an entire industry and a revolution in material engineering arose.

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

Good point! Interesting

[@larryteslaspacexboringlawr739]

did you already listen to the podcast on jane marcet ? ( THE CITIZEN SCIENTIST, Jane Marcet: What'sHerName Podcast Episode 68 , Oct 26, 2020 , WhatsHerName Podcast ) i hope you could be guest on their podcast

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

I have never heard of that podcast,, I have to be honest I don’t often listen to podcasts, but I love being guests on podcasts.

[@andreveltman7112]

Fantastic overview, a real joy to watch! At 7:25 you mention that arclamps wers used until the late 1800s, but it was much longer! Arc lamps were /(still are?) used in movi projectors (see kzbin.info/www/bejne/Zpq2lHycpst2fc0).

[@buzzybuzz2906]

Was this the same Humphry Davy's who invented the miners' safety lamp that saved countless lives in coal mines? Why no mention of it?

[@batezioman7448]

This guy is actually my ancestor. Too bad he'd probably hate me for being half black lmao

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

That is so cool that you are related to him! I’ve never read anything particularly racist from Humphry Davy, but considering when he lived you are probably correct that the chances are high that he wouldn’t of been particularly happy with you being half-black. Are you a descendent of his brother, John Davy?

[@batezioman7448]

@@Kathy_Loves_Physics not entirely sure. My grandfather is from the UK and told me about Humpry and gave me a book on him.

[@2msvalkyrie529]

@ BatEzioMan Don't worry . What goes around etc........We're almost at the stage where you have to apologize for having NO black ancestry ! Give it another few years.....

[@larryteslaspacexboringlawr739]

jane marcet at 8:00

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

I also talk about Jane Marcet a bit more in my next video about Faraday.

[@disenodesuenos1247]

Who paid to all these scientists to be scientists back then?

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

Diseño de Sueños Great question, the Royal Institute where Faraday worked got its money from its members which were the leading people in Britain at the time. Davy did several jobs for the British government and he would work as a chemist for local businesses.

[@disenodesuenos1247]

Oh, I see, thank you. So the academy where galvani worked was also supported by leading italian people at the time?

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

@@disenodesuenos1247 hrm good question, Volta was a professor so I assume they paid him but honestly I don’t know (I know the university where galvani worked paid pretty well)

[@chrisspatz8811]

Doing drugs is not necessary for creativity.

[@WV591]

This is a perfect example of why all drugs should be legalized. We need more inventions. Suppression of genius minds and Stagnation has gone on long enough, and we know the reason. There you have it....

[@noahway13]

She did not say who DID invent laughing gas

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

According to my phone it was Joseph Priestly in 1772.

[@noahway13]

@@Kathy_Loves_Physics Your phone agrees with my laptop. I love your style of video. At least I was paying attention... right? = ) Something has really astounded me. It is how many times I see that a mistake or good luck caused something to be discovered. (Vulcanization of rubber, antibiotics, radiation, etc, etc) I'd like to see a video or a series on that. I don't know if you are thin on ideas for new videos or not. (I'd do it myself, but I'm mad because I had to look up who invented laughing gas, so...)

[@user-fl3je7pc3y]

Everything is a drug🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@SagarPatil-wb8po]

Yah aapka Suraksha handwriting dikh raha hai aur Main To likh likhna start bhi kar diya hun ko comment box Mein bataiye aur like Karunga FIR karunga

[@SagarPatil-wb8po]

Jay Bajrangbali ki Jay Jay Bajrangbali Bhakti aur Tumhara video Dekhte Hue Pagal Ho Jaenge Bajrangbali tere ko theek karo Kaisa bhi like karo share karo Ram Shukla se understand

[@ESPLTD322]

But somehow Edison created the light bulb more than 60 years later? Lmao I knew he stole his workers’ inventions, but obviously he stole his parents’ generations’ inventions as well haha

[@jhonatanernesto63sichelisa2]

🤬🤬

[@67comet]

OMG you cut your hair off! I'm sure it's not as hot, and easier to take care of, but .. YOU CUT YOUR HAIR OFF! ..

[@Kathy_Loves_Physics]

You sound like my husband. 🤣

[@67comet]

@@Kathy_Loves_Physics I've have no doubt 😊.. My ex and I agreed with hair length, so we never had a spat about that..

[@johnmichael9713]

Having a theme song that just repeats the same word over and over at the beginning and end of your video is extremely annoying. It's not a cute song, it just gets stuck in your head, and so I will not be watching your channel, even though it was good otherwise. I'm not exposing myself to that kind of psychological warfare that tries to force things into my mind by repeating them over and over.