The first car to break 100 km/h was electric, in 1899
Camille Jenatzy's torpedo-shaped La Jamais Contente hit 105.88 km/h outside Paris. Petrol cars soon caught up, and electrics vanished for decades. ⚡
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Energy
Every discovery began with someone wanting to know a little more.
5 discoveries
Lightning strikes when the sky above you is still blue ☀️
The bolt comes from a storm too far away to see, and the thunder is just air exploding outward from its heat. So much for waiting for the rain 🌧️
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Norway built a thunder generator to catch lightning in a supercapacitor
When the strike hit, a coil converted the enormous current into a safer, lower voltage so the supercapacitor could store a tiny charge — enough to show it's possible, not to power your house. ⚡
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Early electric cars were sold as women's cars, no hand crank required
Gas cars needed a strenuous hand crank to start, which was considered unladylike; electric cars avoided that and were pitched as clean, quiet, and easy for women to drive.
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Your light bulb is a 90% efficient heater that leaks a little light
That glowing filament gets hot enough to shine, and most of the energy it burns off escapes as warmth rather than illumination.
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