There The Volta Clustercreated by Alexandre Volta In the 1799represents the ancestor of the modern electric battery, the first electricity generator. It consists of a column of three repeating elements: zinc disks, copper disks and an intermediate layer of cardboard soaked in salt water. This stack is inspired by a Electroplating experiment What does that have to do with it… dead frog legs! But how does it work and what do frogs have to do with it?
The Origins of the Volta Battery: Galvani's Experience
Invented in 1799 by Alexandre VoltaThe Volta Battery is the result of a series of electricity experiments in response to certain measurements made by the physiologist and anatomist Luigi Galvani. The latter found out The muscles of dead frogs contracted when we touch one Pair of electrodes. Galvani suspected the presence of a certain fluid found in animals, a type of animal electricity.
This phenomenon fascinated Volta, who studied it and concluded that the movement of frog muscles was simply movement Current flow indicator, a type of natural measuring instrument. He actually noticed that the frog's muscle movement was increased in the presence of Electrodes made of different materials and that this phenomenon did not occur with all materials. He therefore understood that it was the communicating electrodes themselves that generated this pulse, and not the hypothetical electroplating fluid.
However, Volta and Galvani were partly right: the metals chosen were, as Volta claimed, elementary, but the electric current was generated by chemical reactions between the electrodes and the frog's flesh. Later, Volta managed to recreate the phenomenon without the use of animal bodies and construct the so-called Volta battery. But how does it work?
Volta battery operation
The name stack comes from providing more overlapping elements, stacked. Each element consists of three discs made of different materials: one of copperone of Cardboard soaked in salt wateris part of zinc. The central disc acts as a conductor, allowing electrical charges to pass between the two metal discs made of copper and zinc, which act as electrodes.
Thanks to redox reactions, among other things Potential difference An electrical current is created between the two electrodes, which is created by connecting the two electrodes via a metal wire Direct current. Volta also realized that the greater the number of elements connected in series, the greater the tension between the extremes.
Nowadays, some of the batteries we use have a similar functioning to Volta batteries: the so-called dry cell batteries, that do not contain any liquids. The most common examples include: zinc-carbon batteries, THE Alkaline batteries and that Button batteriesUsed to power calculators and clocks.
