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Inventors and Inventions

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin
Reading Level
     edHelper's suggested reading level:   grades 7 to 8
     Flesch-Kincaid grade level:   7.19

Vocabulary
     challenging words:    better, radiate, self-taught, nuisance, reading, mainly, improvement, ability, employ, possible, iron, thunderstorm, bifocal, foreign, lifetime, invention
     content words:    Ben Franklin, Benjamin Franklin, David Rittenhouse

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Benjamin Franklin
By Sharon Fabian 		  
1     What makes a person famous -- great looks, athletic ability, musical talent, star quality?
 
2     Ben Franklin has been famous for a long time. Maybe he had all of those qualities, or maybe he didn't. Either way, that's not what he is remembered for. Ben Franklin is remembered for his many great achievements, including some great inventions. None of those "star qualities" would have helped him invent the Franklin stove, but another great quality did, curiosity. Franklin was curious about how things worked. When something didn't work very well, he liked to go to his workshop and see what he could come up with. He liked to experiment to see if his ideas were right. His curiosity led to some more inventions too, including bifocal glasses and the lightning rod.
 
3     Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod in 1752, during the time that he was experimenting with electricity. Everyone has heard the tale about how he flew a kite in a thunderstorm to see if lightning was really electricity. He also used other creations to test out his ideas about electricity. One of them was call lightning bells, which were bells that would jingle when there was electricity in the air. He first set up a lightning rod to test for electricity too. Later when he observed a house that had been struck by lightning he noticed that the entire house had burned down except for the parts that had metal in them. This gave him the idea to use his lightning rod to protect a house in a storm.

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