electricity.

Alessandro Volta.

-Who is the scientist?

Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Gerolamo Umberto Volta (18 February 1745 – 5 March 1827) was an Italian physicist known especially for the invention of the battery in the 1800s.

Volta was born in Como, Italy on 18 February 1745. In 1774, he became a physics professor at the Royal School in Como. A year later, he improved and popularized the electrophorus, a device that produced a static charge.

In 1786, Luigi Galvani, an Italian professor of medicine, found that when the leg of a dead frog was touched by a metal knife, the leg twitched violently which he dubbed "animal electricity".

Galvani thought that the muscles of the frog must contain electricity. In 1792, Alessandro Volta disagreed. He realised that the main factors in Galvani's discovery were the two different metals - the steel knife and the tin plate - which the frog was lying. Volta showed that when moisture comes between two different metals, electricity is created.

Volta built different piles using thirty, forty or sixty elements. This enabled him to study the action of the pile on the electric fluid, depending on the number of elements, and he confirmed that the electric shock increased in intensity with the number of elements used in the pile.

In 1800, after extensive experimentation, he invented the first electric battery, the voltaic pile which produced a steady electric current. The voltaic pile consisted of a pile of zinc and silver discs separated by moist pasteboard that had been soaked in saltwater. A wire connecting the bottom zinc disc to the top silver disc could produce repeated sparks.

In this way, a new kind of electricity was discovered, electricity that flowed steadily like a current of water instead of discharging itself in a single spark or shock. Volta showed that electricity could be made to travel from one place to another by wire, thereby making an important contribution to the science of electricity.

The unit of electrical potential, the Volt, is named after Volta.

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-How have Volta contributed/made an influence or impact on the area of electrictity?

To summarize, we would not have all the portable electronic devices we have today if it wasn't for Alessandro Volta, who invented the electronic battery. Everything from automobiles and portable game devices wouldn't be able to function without batteries, so they wouldn't even exist hypothetically without his invention.

Without him and his method of containing and transporting electricity, modern technology might have taken a completely different route. Our world today may have been very different.

Without his invention, Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison would not be able to invent the first electric light bulb as there will be no Volta's theory of electric current. And if Joseph Swan and Thomas Edison did not invent the lamp later on, rooms of buildings in cities would not be illuminated.

-What values does Alessandro Volta have that we would like to learn from him?

1) Perseverance.

He repeated Galvani's experiments many times with many different materials before coming to a conclusion that it was the two dissimilar metals, not the frog’s leg that produced the electricity. The frog’s leg was just an indicator of presence of the electricity.

2) Commitment.

The physiologists and anatomists tended to support Galvani's view that the electricity was produced by the animal tissue itself whereas the physicists and chemists, like Volta, tended to see it as produced by the external bimetallic contacts.

The resulting rivalry not only took on international dimensions but died out only gradually after more than a decade.

Although Galvani withdrew from the arena, allowing others to carry his standard, Volta took an active role in the controversy and vigorously pursued his research.

3) Self-confidence.

At the age of 14, he realized his dream was to be a physicist. He had confidence that he could become a successful physicist and he did.

-Reflection

We have learnt that famous scientists need to have determination and consistence hard work in order for them to succeed and come up with an invention that may benefit the whole world.

If it is not for them, we would not have everything we have now and our world would have been very boring. We should be grateful for their inventions.

Through this project, we have learnt a lot about Alessandro Volta and how his invention came about.

We got distracted by music and unnecessary stuffs and we were not able to concentrate. We decided if we concentrated, we would be able to finish the work quickly and do other stuffs after the project. Therefore, we were able to complete this project and we managed to do a good job, better than we expected.

Thank you!

Source: Wikipedia

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Alessandro Volta's biography