Historical figure · Pearson Edexcel International GCSE revision on Incandio

Alessandro Volta

Who Built A Battery Without A Frog · Physicist & Count · 1745–1827

Who refused to believe that electricity lived inside a frog, and settled the argument by building a column of silver and zinc discs that produced a steady current with no animal in it at all.

Defend these ideas against Volta

Incandio is a free revision platform for the Pearson Edexcel International GCSE, and on it a topic counts as mastered only once you have learned it, proved it in questions, taught it back and defended it against the person with the strongest claim on it. Alessandro Volta is that person for 2 topics on the course:

• Voltage as Energy per Charge — Physics
• The Reactivity Series — Chemistry

Who was Volta?

Alessandro Volta was born at Como in 1745 and became professor of experimental physics at Pavia. His great dispute was with Luigi Galvani, who had found that a frog's leg twitches when touched with two different metals and had concluded that the electricity resided in the animal — a vital force in the tissue, which he called animal electricity. Volta thought otherwise. He argued that the frog was merely an extremely sensitive detector, and that the electricity arose from the contact of two dissimilar metals with a moist conductor between them. To settle it he built an apparatus with no animal in it: discs of silver and zinc in pairs, separated by pasteboard soaked in brine, stacked into a column. It worked. The pile, described in a letter to the Royal Society in 1800, produced the first steady and sustained electric current available to anybody, and it ended the argument about animal electricity. Its consequences were immediate and enormous: within months Nicholson and Carlisle used it to split water, and within a few years Humphry Davy was pulling new elements out of molten salts. Napoleon made Volta a count and a senator of the Kingdom of Italy. Galvani had died in 1798, two years before the pile was announced, still defending his position; Volta remained generous about the man and immovable about the theory.

Major achievements

• Built the voltaic pile, the first source of steady continuous electric current
• Refuted Galvani's theory of animal electricity by removing the animal from the experiment
• Described the pile to the Royal Society in 1800, setting off electrochemistry across Europe
• Invented the electrophorus and a condensing electroscope of great sensitivity
• Showed that the effect depended on the pairing of dissimilar metals with a moist conductor

Life in brief

• 1745 — Born at Como: Into a noble but impoverished Lombard family.
• 1775 — The electrophorus: A device for generating and storing static charge.
• 1791 — Galvani publishes: The frog's leg, and the claim of animal electricity.
• 1794 — The dispute begins in earnest: Volta argues the effect is metallic, not vital.
• 1800 — The pile: Silver, zinc and brine-soaked card, described to the Royal Society.
• 1801 — Demonstration before Napoleon: A count, a senator and a medal follow.
• 1827 — Dies at Como: The volt is named after him fifty-four years later.

Explore the life of Volta — five chapters

1. The Boy Who Did Not Speak Until He Was Four — Como, and a career in static electricity
2. The Frog's Leg — Galvani's claim, and why it was reasonable
3. Take the Animal Out — Silver, zinc and brine-soaked card, 1800
4. Within Months — Water split, and six elements out of the ground
5. The Volt — A quiet retirement, and a unit

Read the five-chapter life of Alessandro Volta →

Begin

• Start a conversation with Volta — a dramatised, historically grounded AI portrayal
• Read the Historical Brief
• Explore the life of Volta — five chapters
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