Wednesday, February 8, 2012

power up!

Batteries.
We take batteries for granted way more often than we should. Imagine if you had to plug EVERYTHING into the wall. Your wii remote, your, your TVs remote your DVD remote, that big bird bicycle I had when I was like 5, that thing was awesome….I’m sure batteries are more useful than only for remote controls and toys, I just can’t think of any right now, but in any case, batteries are super practical, who came up with the first one and how do they work?
There’s this thing called the Bagdad battery but I already knew about it and will refrain from discussing it cause well thanks to history channel now I’m not sure whether or not this is super awesome, or just archeologists overanalyzing everything, if you want to learn about it : Baghdad Battery, be my guest.
Turns out the modern day battery was discovered thanks to a frog leg, (mmm yum, I love tender frog legs all delicious and grilled in like a light white wine sauce all dripping with golden juicy awesomeness…wait, oh yea batteries) so Luigi Galvani, Italian scientist dude, was dissecting a frog on a brass hook and when he touched the hook with an iron scalpel the frog leg moved. Crazy! He called this “animal electricity” an never put two and two together, his bff Alessandro Volta came along and was like no dude, it’s the metals touching and totally stole all his thunder! “Volta invented the first true battery, which came to be known as the Voltaic Pile. The Voltaic Pile consisted of pairs of copper and zinc discs piled on top of each other, separated by a layer of cloth or cardboard soaked in brine (i.e., the electrolyte)”  
Turns out since then there were A TON of other battery samples that came along. Ben Franklin however was the first to use the term “battery” to describe one of these contraptions. This dude was all up in everyone’s business, goodness gracious! The  Alkaline battery like we know it today came along in the mid 50’s and the lithium super awesome battery that keeps your remote controls working for like ever was developed in the early 70’s and made even more awesome in the late 90’s. I’m sure crazy scientist dudes are not through discovering new awesome ways to power our tiny appliances!.
And there you have it delicious frogs and sciencey garbles. Batteries are definitely awesome.
if you need to know more : batteries

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