Editing Alessandro Volta (section)

==Career==

In 1774, he became a professor of physics at the Royal School in Como. A year later, he improved and popularised the [[electrophorus]], a device that produced [[static electricity]]. His promotion of it was so extensive that he is often credited with its invention, even though a machine operating on the same principle was described in 1762 by the Swedish experimenter [[Johan Wilcke]].<ref name="pancaldi" /><ref name="wilcke" /> In 1777, he travelled through Switzerland, where he befriended [[H. B. de Saussure]].

In the years between 1776 and 1778, Volta studied the [[chemistry]] of gases. He researched and discovered [[methane]] after reading a paper by [[Benjamin Franklin]] of the United States on "flammable air". In November 1776, he found methane in the marshes of [[Angera]] on [[Lake Maggiore]],<ref name="marsh" /> and by 1778 he managed to isolate it.<ref name="methane" /> He devised experiments such as the [[combustion|ignition]] of methane by an electric [[Electrostatic discharge|spark]] in a closed vessel.

Volta also studied what we now call electrical [[capacitance]], developing separate means to study both electrical potential difference (''V'') and charge (''Q''), and discovering that for a given object, they are proportional.<ref name="williams" /> This is called Volta's Law of Capacitance, and for this work, the unit of electrical potential has been named the volt.<ref name="williams" />

In 1779, he became a professor of experimental physics at the [[University of Pavia]], a chair that he occupied for almost 40 years.<ref name="munro" /> Volta's lectures were so crowded with students that the subsequent emperor [[Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor|Joseph II]] ordered the construction (based on a project by [[Leopoldo Pollack|Leopold Pollack]]) of a new "physical theatre", today the "Aula Volta".<ref name="Aula Volta">{{cite web|url=https://alessandrovolta.it/luoghi-voltiani/pavia/aula-volta/|title=Aula Volta|work=Luoghi Voltiani|access-date=21 August 2022}}</ref> Furthermore, the emperor granted Volta substantial funding to equip the physics cabinet with instruments, purchased by Volta in England and France. At the [[University History Museum, University of Pavia|University History Museum]] of the University of Pavia there are 150 of them, used by Alessandro Volta.<ref name="Sala Volta">{{cite web|url=https://museoperlastoria.unipv.it/en/volta-room/|title=Sala Volta|work=Musei Unipv|access-date=21 August 2022}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://alessandrovolta.it/luoghi-voltiani/pavia/gabinetto-fisico/|title=Gabinetto Fisico|work=Luoghi Voltiani|access-date=21 August 2022}}</ref>