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deinonychus commented on the word frog battery
"A frog battery is an electrochemical battery consisting of a number of dead frogs (or sometimes live ones), which form the cells of the battery connected in a series arrangement. It is a kind of biobattery. It was used in early scientific investigations of electricity and academic demonstrations.
The principle behind the battery is the injury potential created in a muscle when it is damaged, although this was not fully understood at the time; the potential being caused incidentally due to the dissection of the frog's muscles.
The frog battery is an example of a class of biobatteries which can be made from any number of animals. The general term for an example of this class is the muscular pile."
From this Wikipedia article where there's also some amazing illustrations of frog batteries and an ox-head battery.
July 9, 2012