As the world's need for large amounts of portable energy grows at an ever-increasing pace, many innovators have sought to replace current battery technology with something better.
The first battery was invented in 1800 by Italian physicist Alessandro Volta. The flow of electrons from one material to the other is generated by the physical joining of two different materials. The stream of electrons is portable energy that can be harnessed to generate power.
The first materials used to make batteries were copper and zinc. Today's best batteries are those that produce the highest electrical output in the smallest possible size and pair the metal with one of several different metallic compounds. Over the centuries, there have been improvements, but modern batteries rely on the same strategy as that of Volta: pair together materials that can generate an electrochemical reaction and snatch the electrons that are produced.
Even before humanmade batteries started generating electric current, electric fishes, such as the saltwater torpedo fish of the Mediterranean, existed. Today's battery scientists still look to electric fishes for ideas because they inspired the original research that led to his battery.
The only way for people to generate electricity was to rub various materials together, typically silk on glass, and to capture the resulting static electricity. This was not an easy way to generate power.
The electric fishes had an internal organ that generated electricity. He thought he could find a novel way to generate electricity if he could mimic its workings.
The fish's electric organ is made of long stacks of cells that look like a roll of coins. To see if he could find a combination that would produce electricity, Volta cut out coinlike disks from sheets of various materials and started stacking them in different sequence. He tried stacking copper disks with zinc ones and separated them from the paper disks with saltwater.
The electrical output was proportional to the height of the stack. He thought he had discovered the secret of how eels generate their electricity and that he had created an artificial version of the electric organ of fish, so he called it an artificial electric organ.
Scientists know that the reactions between different materials have nothing to do with the way an electric eel makes electricity. The approach the eel uses is similar to the way our nerve cells generate electrical signals.
The electric organ pump ion across a semipermeable barrier creates an electrical charge difference between the inside and the outside of the barrier. An electrical current can be generated when the gates in the Membrane open. The eel is able to open all of its gates at the same time to generate electricity, which it uses to attack its prey.
Electric eels don't shock their prey to death, they just stun it before attacking. The electric current in American household outlets is not enough to kill an Eel that can generate hundreds of volts of electricity. Each electric pulse lasts a couple thousandths of a second and delivers less than 1 Amp. That's just 5% of the total household power.
This is similar to how electric fences work, with very low amperage and short high-voltage electricity. They do not kill bears that try to get through them. It is similar to a modern stun gun, which works by delivering a very high-voltage pulse with very low amperage.
Modern electrical scientists looking to transform battery technology find inspiration in electric eels.
A team of scientists from the United States and Switzerland are working on a new type of battery. They think that their flexible battery could someday be used to power medical implants. The team admits they have a long way to go. The research continues.
The three scientists who developed the battery won the chemistry prize. The foundation of a wireless, fossil fuel-free society was laid by the work of the awardees, according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
The part that is true is the fact that all handheld wireless devices now have batteries. We will have to wait and see if the fossil fuel-free society claim is true. The contributions of electric eels were not mentioned.
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The strongest known bioelectricity generator on Earth is the new South American species of electric eel, which was discovered by scientists from the Smithsonian Institution. The electrical discharge of a single eel was recorded at 860 volts, which is 200 times higher than the previous record-holding eel species, the Electrophorus electricus.
The electric eels humble us with theirs, just as we humans try to celebrate the greatness of our portable energy source.
The Conversation is a news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by a Georgetown University student.
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