#Leyden jar

[literallymechanical]

Alessandro Volta's Electric Eels

Okay so, it turns out that your cell phone battery is a basically a homunculus of an electric fish. 

These are the same thing. Let me explain.

@fishteriously, a paleoichthyologist, told me that Alessandro Volta invented the electric battery after studying electric eels and rays.  This sounded like a fun science factoid!  I wanted to know more!  I saw the claim repeated on any number of pop science articles from the last century or so, but none that quoted from primary sources.

The voltaic pile is one of the most important inventions, ever, of all time.  Before Volta, electricity could be stored in Leyden jar capacitors, which would discharge in a single, brief burst. Volta's pile was the first method of producing a continuous electric current, which launched the modern era of electricity as we know it. His explanation for how it worked was incorrect, but it was still a massive breakthrough.

Batteries use the same principle to this day, just with different materials (e.g. cobalt oxide, graphite, and lithium salts rather than silver, zinc, and brine).

But is it a fish?

This is Volta's first schematic of a battery, or "voltaic pile" – at the time, "battery" referred to a bunch of Leyden jars linked in series, the term wouldn't come to refer to piles until later. "Z" and "A" stand for zinc and silver ("argentum"), with brine-soaked paper disks between. It does look a bit like an eel?

But is it truly?

Surely, if Volta modeled the pile after electric fishes, I’d be able to find a citation!  Wikipedia is usually a good place to start when hunting primary sources, but no luck.  No mention of fish at all.  I trust fishteriously more than wikipedia, however, so I went digging.  Looks like Volta first reported his discovery in a Letter to the Royal Society in 1800.

Found the letter!

Aw beans, it’s in French.  I haven’t studied French since high school.

BUT WAIT. WHAT WAS THAT.

Une commotion électrique? A trembling eel???

Okay so now I NEEDED to read the letter in English. I found an English-language summary published by the Royal Society, but it looks like the only English translation of the full letter was in the appendix of an out-of-print book called “Alessandro Volta and the Electric Battery.”

So I bought a used copy. Let's see what Volta has to say about this:

"To this apparatus ... I have constructed it, in its form to the natural electric organ of the torpedo or electric eel, &c, than to the Leyden flask and electric batteries [battery = linked Leyden flasks], I would wish to give the name of artificial electric organ."

Yes! The voltaic pile was explicitly modeled after electric fishes – torpedo rays and electric eels.  Fishteriously was 100% correct. Volta never even calls it a "pile," it is always "artificial electric organ." A significant portion of the letter is devoted to electric eels and torpedo rays, in fact.

But also, the rest of the letter is bonkers.

He wrote pages on painful experiments with the artificial electric organ – touching it, poking it into his eyes and ears, making other people touch it, generally just shocking the ever loving hell out of himself over and over. He routinely shocks himself so hard that he has to take breaks. And of course, he licks it.

But that's not the best part:

He says that the artificial electric organ can be turned sideways and submerged in liquid...

"...by which means these cylinders would have a pretty good resemblance to the electric eel ... they might be joined together by pliable metallic wires or screw springs, and then covered with a skin terminated by a head and tail properly formed, &c."

There you have it. One of the most important scientific discoveries of all time, and it includes a crafts project for building an authentic electric eel puppet.

In summary, next time you charge your phone, take a moment to thank the soul of the electric fish inside of it.

[dimachina]

Jack Black is my own personal Electric Leyden Jar

[simstorian-blog]

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[internetskiff]

I think Empress Tihana is a pretty underrated Amnesia character. I find it hard to call her outright evil because despite everything she's sort of as much a prisoner of circumstance as the others. Everything she's done was out of a misguided belief that it'll end up saving Tasi's child. Yes, she's damned half the crew of the Cassandra to turning into monsters, but it seems like a sort of response to Tasi rejecting her initial offer. It's fucked up, but it seems she did it in hopes Tasi would be more open to suggestion under the effects of it - she still wanted to save her child even then. Judging by the fairytale retelling of her rule over Zerzura, I'm not even sure how much say she had in becoming "The Last and Eternal" Empress of her bloodline. " 'Nonsense', said the wise people, 'We will brew you a magic potion, and then you will live forever.' " - makes it sound as if it was mostly the Alchemist's idea. Brings me to another point, but she and another Zerzurian seems to be the only real example of how an overabundance of Vitae can affect the anatomy:

You see all the roots sprouting all over her throne chamber? I don't think they're plants at all. Judging from the fact that she can command them, willing them to move and even using them to try and tear open a wall during one of the endings, I think this is all actually an extension of her body. She's sprouted out all over the room. I'm not even sure if the way her head split open is a direct result of some sort of surgical intrusion to supply her with Vitae or if her head split open as her body began to grow more and more reliant on the supply, deforming and spreading until it covered her entire throne room. Kita seems to suffer from the same effects, though to a lesser extent since unlike the Empress, who's feeding on an entire city's worth of suffering, he seems to have been leeching off of one single leyden jar of Vitae the whole time.

He's been encased in similar vines that seem to have sprouted from his legs, basically trapped in his chair for the rest of his life. I'm not sure if this is specifically how Zerzurian anatomy reacts to Vitae or if the human body would suffer similar effects if one tried to overextend their lifespan as those two have. Considering Kita calls his Vitae intake a "meagre portion", the amount of suffering Alexander collected during his time as the Baron of Brennenburg barely even equates to a single jar. It explains why he looks so old and withered compared to Kita and The Empress, his intake must've been enough to keep him alive but not enough to keep the effects of aging at bay. Thinking about it, there is a single example of how Vitae would affect human anatomy, but it is combined with the effects of turning into a Ghoul.

Lambert seems to be what happens when a Ghoul is allowed to absorb the Vitae inside of their system. I believe the only reason Rebirth's ghouls are so gangly and twitchy (and relatively humanoid) is because they are immediately bled dry of their accumulated Vitae by Alchemist machinery. Lambert on the other hand moves relatively smoothly, like an animal, and he has become a lot larger as a result of his environment, war being inherently a breeding groud for human suffering and therefore the perfect environment to cultivate Vitae. There is no one to take it from him, so his metamorphosis is allowed to progress even further. It's even more off-putting considering even now he seems to be only halfway done turning into something else. I think in the ending where you allow him to escape into No Man's land he will eventually grow into something even worse as he now has an unlimited supply of soldiers to torture, both enemy and ally. He seems to realize bullets do nothing to him during the encounter in the Roman ritual pit, so in that ending Henri has basically unleashed a near-unstoppable monster out into the world. Vitae offers an indefinite extension of life, but not without leaving it's mark on the user's body. Tasi's child would probably end up just as warped as The Empress if left in her care.

[the-wright]

Post-canon AtLA idea:

After the war, while living back in the Southern Water Tribe, Sokka's newfound fondness for scientific experimentation leads him to playing around with electricity. His experiments exploit the ridiculously low humidity of his frozen home to easily generate static electricity, which he eventually learns to store in a "Sokka Jar" (basically a Leyden Jar) for use in later experiments.

After a while, Sokka becomes convinced that his "electricity" is the same as both natural lightning and the stuff the Fire Nation Royal Family generates, but he wants to conduct more tests. He's committed enough to this to head over to the Caldera, where Zuko admits that Iroh hasn't been around since the end of the war, and Zuko himself can only accidentally blow himself up when trying to make lightning. Lacking any other option, Sokka heads over to the facility currently housing the only other person who could still reliability generate lightning.

Azula had spent the time after the end of the war in a remote estate, where she was contained by a large continent of guards while healers visited on a regular basis to help her work through her issues . Sokka's arrival was the most abrupt surprise she'd experienced since her arrival, as he insisted that she use her lightningbending powers to help him in his electrical experiments. The pair quickly became an unexpectedly amazing research team, as Azula was able to add both her formal mathematical education and her capacity as a living battery to Sokka's prior research and innate creativity and insight.

The Sokka/Azula power-duo is eventually responsible for about 90% of the crazy AtLA to LoK jump between "WTF is electricity" to "everyone's got a radio". I also imagine that their process quickly grows to include a *bunch* of making out, but I'll leave that idea up to the reader.

[impossiblepluto]

Bruh, there are already 41 votes on the 2x04 versus 1x08 poll, and it is NAILBITING close!!! (Also, somehow it’s kind of close between 1x07 and 1x13. Huh. 🤔 I’ve never had any close attachment to 1x13, and I’m not 100% about the fandom vibes for it?) This is gonna be an intense round!!

It was 44 votes and tied this morning when I peeked at it! I think this might be a down to the wire situation again. Not sure how many votes the rounds generally average but we're probably getting close to running out of voters?

I think I went with 1x07 but that was a round that I admit I sat with for a minute before I voted. I love the helicopter crash. Love the way Mac wakes up laying on the forest floor, the implication that Jack carried him to safety. I love a survival in the wilderness scenario. I love the storm blowing in and the Leyden jars and lightning and the: "any last words?" "well, I'm not going to say I love you"

and I wish we'd gotten then dealing with the hearing loss and ringing ears for a little while longer.

And I will always laugh that they apparently used all their available whump makeup on Jack and had nothing left for Mac.

But I know I'm an outlier in that most of my favorite episodes are in season one (and even the first half of season one)

But 1x07 Can Opener gave us the origins of Mac's complicated relationship with oxygen. And you can't read fanfic without stumbling over this topic and I'm so grateful for it.

I am going to laugh if 1x06 and 3x13 tie again. The funniest thing the wheel randomizer did was pit those two against each other again

[metamatar]

Those electricians who thought electricity a fluid and therefore gave particular emphasis to conduction provide an excellent case in point. Led by this belief, which could scarcely cope with the known multiplicity of attractive and repulsive effects, several of them conceived the idea of bottling the electrical fluid. The immediate fruit of their efforts was the Leyden jar, a device which might never have been discovered by a man exploring nature casually or at random, but which was in fact independently developed by at least two investigators in the early 1740’s. Almost from the start of his electrical researches, Franklin was particularly concerned to explain that strange and, in the event, particularly revealing piece of special apparatus. His success in doing so provided the most effective of the arguments that made his theory a paradigm, though one that was still unable to account for quite all the known cases of electrical repulsion.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn

[mooniety]

i just had an awful idea where meta decides to "borrow" susie to power the halberd since my headcanons make her a battery entirely comprised of flesh & she almost dies from exhaustion after powering it for a surprisingly good amount of time (i'd imagine that the halberd kind of sucks at expending energy efficiently which is why she's drained so significantly in comparison to her mech suit, especially since the halberd's so big in size as well)

after that, he never does this again.

also the casing he puts her in is a human sized leyden jar - can't imagine how terrifying that probably is.

[citizenscreen]

Benjamin Franklin was said to have flown a kite during a thunderstorm to collect ambient electrical charge in a Leyden jar, enabling him to demonstrate the connection between lightning and electricity.

[dustedandsocial]

Dusted&Social #09 (2-17-23)

Pictured: Cosey Mueller AyooLii - Soul Train Cosey Mueller - Innen Ohne Osheyack - A River's Mouth Delacave - Fatherless chimers - generator Guppy - Crystal Hog Zera - Earth Burnt Public Relations - Radio Troth - Amarant Fiesta En El Vacío - Dream Partner mantarochen - Massen in der Stadt FERAL - RECLUSE Chad Void - Two Snakes Cakedog - Hollywood Hoe Antoine Heroics - Dynamic Beau Wanzer - SIMPLE MEN Equipment Pointed Ankh - Late Night A.I. Leyden Jars - A Seed A Start Le Cri du Caire - Sadiya (Purple Feathers)

https://www.mixcloud.com/dustedandsocial/dustedsocial-ep-09-2-17-23/

[hoosierbi]

k company have a bastard jar for leyden and snafu

[ripeteeth]

[it's wip wednesday and i have more frankensmut]

"You’ve brought this upon yourself, Victor Frankenstein. Damn your eyes, damn your curiosity. 

The word electricity first appeared in print in 1646, in Thomas Browne’s Pseudodoxia Epidemica. How quickly it would come to damn him, only a scant 150 years later, with visions of Leyden jars and twitching frog legs. He had gone to the morgue with a butcher’s eye, clasping one hand around a thick thigh and crying oh what a fine piece of meat! Stumbling home along cobblestones in a blood-hot haze, he’d clutched his grotesque package, nose twitching at the scent of putrescine and formaldehyde. He’d trussed the future Lazarus up in black thread, with his mother’s carefully-taught stitching, and sprinkled electrodes over his skin like salt. 

If you were telling this story yourself, Victor, this is where you’d cry out and claim no fault of your own. But this is not your story, and my words are not nearly as slippery as yours."

[abalidoth]

I used to cover the CRT with tinfoil and use it to charge Leyden jars made from film canisters and/or Franklin bells made from soda cans.

Y'know. In case anyone had any doubt that Doctor Tesseract was kind of an inevitable name for me.

i miss being 5 years old and collecting the static from the tv with my hands

[ftsharp]

1745-1746: Ewald Georg von Kleist and Pieter van Musschenbroek invented the Leyden jar to store an electric charge. Poetry by Tom Sharp.

[sparvverius]

LEYDEN JAR MENTION 🔥🔥🔥🔥⚡️⚡️⚡️

[visualpoett]

Instruments Relating to the Discovery and Use of Electricity, From 1 to 15, No.1 Electrophorus; No.2 Condensing Electroscope; No.3 Leyden Jar and Pith Balls; No.4 Cylindrical Frictional Machine; No.5

English School