The Book Electric: A Journey Through the Curious Story of Electricity

Caltech’s Anton Kapustin tells the story of electricity through the people who discovered it.

by Judy Hill

In the 1870s, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell decided to edit the unpublished papers of Henry Cavendish, the natural philosopher (and noted oddball) who had discovered the relationship between electric voltage and electric current a century earlier. Along the way, Maxwell repeated Cavendish’s experiments in his Cambridge lab, during which time he intentionally shocked himself with the static electricity stored in a Leyden jar. He sometimes shocked visitors who stopped by as well, excited to show them how Cavendish had made his discoveries.

“That is such nerdy behavior,” says Anton Kapustin, Caltech’s Earle C. Anthony Professor of Theoretical Physics and Mathematics. “It’s the kind of thing you would expect from someone today who’s really excited about science.”

Kapustin discovered this tidbit of scientific lore, and many more, while he researched Lightning in a Bottle: Electricity from Thales to Tesla, a book for young people he co-wrote with his wife, Wendy Ho. The book, published this spring and aimed at middle to high school students, took shape out of a frustration with the available literature for this age range.

“I was looking for some popular science books to read to my stepson when he was about 11,” Kapustin says. “I found some on math but not on science—there was literally nothing that fit what I was looking for.”

Popular science books for adults are not engaging enough for children, Kapustin says, and their subjects, like black holes and string theory, can seem overly abstract for kids. Kapustin felt young people need something that connects to the technology around them—and has plenty of pictures. Electricity, he says, is “not something very obvious—you can’t actually see electricity.” And because so much of our technology is electronic, “it’s easy to explain why it’s important.”

“I was sharing with Wendy my frustrations about finding suitable books, and she said, ‘Why don't you write one yourself? You’re a physicist after all,’” recalls Kapustin. She wrote the first chapter to show him it could be done. Five years and 265 pages later, the book, complete with multiple color illustrations and instructions for at-home experiments, was done.

Growing up in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, Kapustin devoured the popular science books for children that were readily available as part of a government directive to steer young people toward STEM. That was how he became interested in science, he says, not by reading textbooks. They were just too boring.” He remembers in particular a book he read at age 6 or 7 called Why Water Is Wet. “It’s kind of a strange question,” he muses now, “but I think it’s perfect for smaller kids.”

Lightning in a Bottle tells the story of electricity through the people who made the most important discoveries. “Humans love stories,” says Kapustin, “and especially children, though even I find my attention wondering when I have a long nonfiction book that isn’t story based.”

However, he also wanted to convey a wealth of information. That can become weighty fast, he says, especially if you include math. So, while there are several formulas in the book, he notes that they are “only the simplest ones. I explain everything in words as well, so if you don't know any algebra, like zero algebra, it’s still understandable.”

He also wanted to demystify science, showing not just the net result of research but also how people come up with their ideas. To fill the holes in his own knowledge, he consulted primary sources, reading original papers by scientists from the 18th and 19th centuries. “There’s nothing mysterious there,” he says. “It shows that anybody can do science. You don't need to be a genius; you just need to have determination.”

Kapustin had at least a passing knowledge of most of the featured scientists, but as he embarked on his research, he realized he knew almost nothing about their personal lives or how they went about discovering what they discovered. “It was a big discovery for me, too,” he says. Many, he found, followed complicated, unexpected routes on the way to their eureka moments, and received some surprising reactions to their discoveries. He is at a loss to explain, for example, the vitriolic response to Ohm’s law by one reviewer, who dismissed Georg Ohm’s 1827 book as “a web of naked fancies.”

Kapustin’s cast of characters also had a variety of motivations. While some, like Cavendish, pursued their research for personal enjoyment and to better understand nature, with barely a care for the practical applications or even for publishing their findings, others, such as George Westinghouse and Nicola Tesla, were at least partially motivated by a desire to make money.

The adversity these researchers faced is integral to the story of electricity, Kapustin says. Several scientists in the book came from impoverished backgrounds, including Stephen Gray, who discovered the distinction between electrical conductors and insulators. Gray worked in the cloth dyeing business in Canterbury in the late 1600s and was able to pursue his research only when he was in his mid-50s, after being granted a place in the London Charterhouse, which offered free housing to elderly people who fell into poverty. Marie Curie faced different yet equally intractable issues: she was unable to attend university in her native Poland because they excluded women. For Albert Einstein, discrimination came in the form of anti-Semitism and a concerted effort by the likes of Philipp Lenard, a fellow physicist and advisor to Adolf Hitler, to discredit his discoveries and paint him as a fraud.

Even in the face of such challenges, these scientists both persevered and thrived. “I hope their stories inspire readers to see that no matter what your starting position is, you don’t need to despair,” Kapustin says.

It certainly wasn’t easy to find the time to write a kids’ book while also being a full-time Caltech professor, but that may not dissuade Kapustin from another attempt. Ho suggested recently that he embark on another book for young readers, this time on quantum physics. “That’s really difficult to make accessible to kids,” concedes Kapustin. “I need to think about if it’s even possible.”