Some years earlier when electrical science was still firmly focussed on electrostatics, he also proposed the idea of a unit of electric tension. Fortunately his suggestion was not taken up because one of these early units equated to In his day Volta was a scientist of great fame. It is a fact that not only was he a leader in the area of electricity, but he also made significant discoveries in the field of chemistry.
Volta's history or biography makes interesting reading and provides an understanding of the difficulties faced by these early pioneers in understanding the basics of electricity. His father had originally been a member of a Jesuit order, but at the age of 41 he decided to marry a lady who was 22 years younger than himself. The family was well connected and appeared to be happy even if rather poor.
On his father's side he had three uncles. One was a Dominican, one a canon, and the other was an archdeacon. On his mother's side though, the family had more of a leaning toward the law. The young Alessandro Volta started his education at the school of rhetoric in Como.
However shortly after he started there, when Volta was only seven years old his father died. It was said that his father was more accomplished at spending money than making it.
In fact Volta said in later years that when his father died he left a small dwelling worth 14 lira, and a debt of 17 lira. Then, five years after his father's death his uncles took charge of his education. Initially they sent him to a Jesuit college, but later they changed the course of his education, moving him elsewhere.
It was during this period that a friend named Giulio Cesare Gattoni provided books and guidance to help his study of electricity. His uncles had decided it would be best for him to study the law but his interest in the natural sciences was so keen that they allowed him to follow his interests and take up career in physics and chemistry. Volta became very absorbed in his studies and from the age of about 20 Volta studied science more formally.
In particular he took an interest in electricity. He also boldly corresponded with many of the leading scientists of the day. In when he was just 18 years old, he corresponded with the eminent French physicist and electrical experimenter, the Abbe Antoine Nollet in Paris.
Later he wrote to Giovanni Battista Beccaria, professor of physics at the University of Turin and the foremost Italian experimenter in electrostatics. In many of these letters he showed a considerable degree of insight into the phenomenon of electricity that was just beginning to be understood. Volta even published some papers.
His first was in , and was entitled "De vi attractiva ignis electrici. But Volta, even at age 14, knew his real interest was physics. Like many scientists of the time, he was especially fascinated by electricity.
Volta dropped his formal studies, and did not attend university. Nonetheless, by age 18 he was corresponding directly with accomplished scientists, and conducting experiments in the laboratory of a family friend. In Volta accepted a post as an instructor at the Como grammar school, and continued his experiments on electricity. Volta was made a professor of physics at the University of Pavia in In most of his experiments, the frog leg could be made to twitch when touched with a probe made of another metal.
The frog legs would also jump when hanging on a metal fence in a lightning storm. He set out to prove Galvani wrong, and sparked a controversy that divided the Italian scientific community.
The metals were generating the current, not the frog parts. Instruments available at the time could not detect weak currents, so Volta, always a dedicated experimentalist, often tested various combinations of metals by placing them on his tongue. In , when he was working at the Royal School in Como Italy , he developed his first invention or, more precisely, he improved, named and popularised an earlier version : the perpetual electrophore, a device that, by electrostatic induction, produced a continuous electric current and transferred electricity to other objects.
Also interested in chemistry, Volta discovered that the flammable air emanating from the marshes of Lake Maggiore was actually a gas , methane, which came from decomposing plant and animal matter.
The finding led him to experiment with replacing the oil in lamps with methane and to create the Volta lamplighter.
In , he obtained the chair of experimental physics at the University of Pavia Italy , where he would teach for almost thirty years. At that time, another Italian scientist, Luigi Galvani, of the University of Bologna, was investigating what he called animal electricity. In an accidental discovery, he observed that the leg of a dead frog that was next to a static electricity machine twitched when it brushed against the tip of a knife.
Following this, Galvani conducted experiments with other animals and concluded that the contractions were produced by an electrical fluid from the organs of animals. Volta was amazed by the discovery, which he described as wonderful, but decided to investigate it for himself. In doing so, he discovered that there really was no need for animals to produce the electric current.
What was needed to originate the electrical flow was the contact between two metals. The discovery put the two scientists at odds with each other, along with their universities, and divided the international community.
Eventually, it would come down on the side of Volta because of his most famous invention: the Voltaic Pile or electric battery. Designed in , it was made of alternating copper and zinc conductive discs with a weakly acidic layer separating each pair of metals. Sara Cundill. M-AR 15th April Insight Beat the blues and stay positive…. M-AR 8th April Insight News Innovative modular builds at Retirement Living developments.
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