Voltaic Pile

Why we should call recharging a battery "revolting" it. A battery (first named by Benjamin Franklin in 1748) is a device that produces electricity from a chemical reaction. In 1800 Alessandro Volta invented the Voltaic pile, the first "wet cell battery" that produced a reliable, steady current of electricity. -- the inventors.org

You read it first in this week’s The Factory in Guide magazine. 

Most of us have learned in school that Benjamin Franklin discovered the connection between lightning and electricity. He did this by experimenting with a metal key tied to a kite in a thunderstorm. (Don't try this at home!) Some mistakenly believe that he discovered electricity, but this is not the case. Electricity was well known way before the illustrious inventor. And if the kite had been actually struck by lightning, there is a good chance that Franklin would have been killed by the charge. 

So, what actually happened? Well according to history, the metal key picked up the static energy in the air around it and that is what the inventor was feeling from the key.

Benjamin Franklin was a man of many talents and inventions. He was the first to use the term "battery" when he experimented with a bunch of charged glass plates. And then came Alessandro Volta, who invented the Voltaic pile, the first "wet cell battery" we read about above, that produced a reliable, steady electrical current.

Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta was an Italian physicist and chemist who was a pioneer of electricity and power and is credited as the inventor of the electric battery and the discoverer of methane. According to Britannica, what is known as the voltaic pile or the voltaic column, Volta’s battery consisted of alternating disks of zinc and silver (or copper and pewter) separated by paper or cloth soaked either in salt water or sodium hydroxide...a simple and reliable source of electric current that did not need to be recharged.

Now, I don't know about you, but I use a lot of batteries for all kinds of things. Why? Because batteries hold a charge of electrical power that make things work for quite a while. And today, there's all kinds and sizes of batteries - thanks to the folks like Benjamin Franklin and Alessandro Volta, who studied these things and who carefully devised different means of a stored and steady current of electricity!

Did you know that a potato can help conduct electricity?! Here is a fun experiment you can try. Click on the Potato Fun with a Parent button below. Be sure to ask your Mom and Dad to help you. What the potato does is simply help conduct electricity by acting as what’s called a salt-bridge between the two metals, allowing the electron current to move freely across the wire to create electricity. 

Numerous fruits rich in electrolytes like bananas and strawberries can also form this chemical reaction. They're basically nature’s version of battery acid. If you try this experiment, have your Mom and Dad be sure to send us pictures. We'd love to see them!

"But now...speak to the earth, and it will teach you;...the hand of the LORD has done this, In whose hand is the life of every living thing." Job 12:7-10