Editing Alessandro Volta (section)

== Volta and Galvani ==
[[File:VoltaBattery.JPG|thumb|Volta battery at the [[Tempio Voltiano]] museum, Como]]
[[Luigi Galvani]], an Italian physicist, discovered something he named "animal electricity" when two different metals were connected in series with a frog's leg and to one another. Volta realised that the frog's leg served as both a conductor of electricity (what we would now call an [[electrolyte]]) and as a detector of electricity. He also understood that the frog's legs were irrelevant to the [[electric current]], which was caused by the two differing metals.<ref>{{cite book |last=Price |first=Derek deSolla |title=On the Brink of Tomorrow: Frontiers of Science |date=1982 |publisher=National Geographic Society |location=Washington D.C. |pages=16–17}}</ref> He replaced the frog's leg with brine-soaked paper and detected the flow of electricity by other means familiar to him from his previous studies. In this way, he discovered the [[electrochemical series]], and the law that the [[electromotive force]] (emf) of a [[galvanic cell]], consisting of a pair of metal [[electrode]]s separated by electrolyte, is the difference between their two electrode potentials (thus, two identical electrodes and a common electrolyte give zero net emf). This may be called Volta's Law of the electrochemical series.

In 1800, as the result of a professional disagreement over the galvanic response advocated by Galvani, Volta invented the [[voltaic pile]], an early [[Battery (electricity)|electric battery]], which produced a steady electric current.<ref name="routledge" /> Volta had determined that the most effective pair of dissimilar metals to produce electricity was [[zinc]] and [[copper]]. Initially, he experimented with individual cells in series, each cell being a wine goblet filled with [[brine]] into which the two dissimilar electrodes were dipped. The voltaic pile replaced the goblets with cardboard soaked in brine.