Excellent Responses!

Hunter, you've done a great job on this project. I don't know if you realize how much you've discovered along the way, but I suspect you have some idea. Your next step is to print a copy of the original paper and start reading it. You have some background now as to the time and level of scientific development, so I will be interested to see if you have many questions as you read. I would like for you to post any questions or comments here so I can follow your progress as you work your way through this paper.

Excellent Work...but now...

I'd like for you to see if you can find any evidence on the internet that Volta and Benjamin Franklin may have been in contact with one another. They were both fascinated by electricity, but did they ever write to or meet one another? Franklin traveled quite often to France, so there may be some record of their knowing one another. Also, Galvani (you referred to him in your response) has a physiological (body) response named for him...can you find it? And tell me what causes that response. I know that this may seem like a "wild goose" chase, but I've got a method to my madness! Be sure to let me know what you find and also - I may have forgotten to mention - you need to be keeping up with the references you've used for your responses up to now, as well as for the rest of the time you're working on this project. You may want to post them each time to the blog response.

Further Questions

Ok - Good job on the first enquiry. (I posted your work below.) Now, I'd like for you to investigate a little more with regard to Volta and his contemporaries (folks who lived and worked around the same time).


Paper: Volta and the Battery

1. From the title of the paper, it can easy be infered that the paper has to do with batteries, elcetricity, cunduction, and a man named Volta.

2.The paper was written in September 1800, and at the time the French revoltionary war and the Nepoleonic wars were raging, and John Adamws was President of the United States.

3.Alessandro Volta had a passion with and was fascinated by electricity.He improved upon the electrophorus, an instrument that produces static electricity, and invented a forerunner of the modern battery. I think we worked with electricity and batteries ecause electricity fascinated him and it awas a new ground in science to be vastly improved on.

January 29, 2008 8:55 AM


New Questions:

1. Were there other scientists around the same time who were working on electricity or batteries? Who were they? What were they doing?

2. Who were the scientists that continued his work?