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Do you know how the volt was discovered? It might surprise you! Daniel Bogdanoff, Mike Hoffman, and Matthew Woerner discuss the volt’s wild history and more in this week’s EEs Talk Tech podcast.
Video (YouTube):
Discussions Overview:
The volt and building batteries
Volta discovered the Volt (article)
Capital vs. Lower case SI units
The Greeks knew about static electricity
It’s not that hard to build a basic battery
How do potato batteries work? 4:30, 10:30
How do lemon batteries work?
The invention of electrostatic generators and storage in Leiden jars
Who were Galvani and Volta?
Galvani started experimenting with static electricity
Mike simply assumes frog legs are delicious
Galvani was skinning a frog leg for some experiments and the frog leg kicked!
Why and how did the leg kick?
Galvani vs. Volta
Galvani believed in “animal electricity,” but Volta thought it was just electricity
Galvani is considered to be the father of bioelectromagnetics
Mike thinks plants crave electrolytes
Redox reactions make biobatteries work (like frog leg batteries and ox head batteries)
Galvani’s nephew performed demonstrations on more than just animal tissue
Mary Shelley and the fabled origin of Frankenstein
Volta and the invention of the Voltaic Stack (or Voltaic Pile)
The first light bulb was demonstrated for the Royal Society in London
What is the volt now?
Mike was born just in time to browse dank memes
Why is it called “natural philosophy” – Because there was much study of the mind (Greeks), and technology finally allowed natural philosophers to study nature.
Wikipedia tip
Back in the day, scientists had to understand a lot of different disciplines
Famous scientific rivalries over time – is Edison vs. Tesla over hyped?
Predictions:
Maker movement
We want EEs Talk Tech fan fiction.
We forgot Mike’s prediction 23:25
EEs Talk Tech is an electrical engineering podcast by Keysight Technologies
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