The frog battery and other instruments
Stories from Physics
for 11-14
14-16
A number of batteries have been produced from animal parts. These gruesome creations were possible due to the existence of the current of injury and demarcation potential that occur in injured tissue and distinguish it from healthy muscle. Animal tissues have also been used in the construction of electrical instruments.
- Aldini created a battery from an ox’s head.
- Galvani used freshly prepared frogs’ legs as an early form of voltmeter.
- Chemist Robert Hare, in addition to suggesting that the experimenter’s tongue may take on “the office of a galvanoscope”, proposed that the limbs of a frog may be used as an “organic instrument”.
- Physicist and pioneering investigator of bioelectricity Carlo Matteucci designed a frog galvanometer consisting of a frog’s leg placed in a glass tube, with “a long piece of sciatic nerve protruding”. The presence of current could be observed by the contraction of the leg muscles.
References
T. A. Saleh, & V. K. Gupta, Nanomaterial and Polymer Membranes, Amsterdam, Elsevier, 2016, p. 3
E. Clarke, & C. D. O’Malley, The Human Brain and Spinal Chord. A Historical Study Illustrated by writings from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century, San Francisco, CA, Norman Publishing, 1996, p. 186
F. Keithley, The Story of Electric and Magnetic Measurement: From 500 BC 1940s, Piscataway, NJ, IEEE Press, p. 51
R. Hare, Compendium of the Course of Chemical Instruction in the Medical Department of the University of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, J. G. Auner, 1840, p. 57.
Available at:G. Bird, Elements of Natural Philosophy, being an experimental introduction to the study of the physical sciences, London, John Churchill, 1848, p. 345
