Alessandro Volta (Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta) was an Italian physicist born on February 18, 1745 – died on March 7, 1827. Volta was considered as a pioneer of electrical science and inventor of voltaic pile.
Alessandro Volta’s invention of the electric battery provided the first source of continuous current. In 1775 Volta’s interest in electricity led him to invent the electrophorus, a device used to generate static electricity.
He showed that all conductors liquid and solid might be divided into two classes, which he called respectively conductors of the first and of the second class, the first embracing metals and carbon in its conducting form, and the second class, water, aqueous solutions of various kinds, and generally those now called electrolytes.
He improved and popularized the electrophorus, a device that produced static electricity. In November 1776, he found methane at Lake Maggiore, and by 1778 he managed to isolate methane. Volta also studied what we now call electrical capacitance, developing separate means to study both electrical potential (V) and charge (Q), and discovering that for a given object, they are proportional.
Volta is credited as the first electrochemical cell. It consists of two electrodes: one made of zinc, the other of copper. The electrolyte is either sulfuric acid mixed with water or a form of saltwater brine. The electrolyte exists in the form 2H+and SO42−. The zinc, which is higher than both copper and hydrogen in the electrochemical series, reacts with the negatively charged sulfate (SO42−). The positively charged hydrogen ions (protons) capture electrons from the copper, forming bubbles of hydrogen gas, H2. This makes the zinc rod the negative electrode and the copper rod the positive electrode.
Read More: Alessandro Volta: Discoverer of Methane
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