Generating Electricity

Imagine this.  You have spent some time in Benjamin Franklin’s workshop, experimenting with static electricity and batteries.  It is time to leave, so you thank him for his time, and he warmly bids you a good day.  Walking out the door, you continue down the strange hallway.  As you do, you are deep in thought.  You turn to Dustin and say, “Franklin said that he captured electricity in his jars, and then released it when he wanted, and that he couldn’t help thinking that his battery holds the promise of amazing power.  What do you think he meant?”

Dustin, who is rarely deep in thought, looks at you with a confused expression.  “Promise of amazing power?  How should I know?  I get that his jar created a spark, which is fine, I guess.  It can zap someone, which is funny sometimes, but it sure doesn’t seem like an amazing power.”

You pass a few more doors, and then come to a door with a nameplate that reads ‘Alessandro Volta.’  The door stands open, so you step inside.

A long wooden table stretches almost the entire length of the room.  Glass bottles, brass instruments, coils of wire, and strange scientific devices cover its surface.  Stacks of metal discs rise from wooden stands like miniature columns.  Nearby sit bowls filled with damp cloth strips and trays holding neat piles of copper, silver, and zinc.  Along the walls, drawings and diagrams hang neatly framed.  Every object seems carefully arranged, yet the room feels strangely alive.

You step further in, and you see a man seated at the far end of the table.  He looks up at you and smiles.  “Welcome!” he says.  “Do you like the room?”  His Italian accent is thick but warm.

You nod your approval.  “Yes, the room is amazing.”  Then you offer the man your hand, and say, “You must be Alessandro Volta.”

He reaches out and shakes your hand, and says, “Yes I am.  Pleased to meet you.”  Then looking around the room, he says, “You should have seen the laboratory I had when I was about your age!”

“You had a laboratory when you were a kid?” Dustin asks.

“Oh yes,” Volta says, leaning back in his chair.  “I was very interested in studying nature.  I always have been.  And a kind priest from my town saw my interest, and he generously secured an old room in a stone tower nearby and invited me to help him set up a laboratory there.  So that’s what we did.  It was nothing like this lovely room, though!”

“What was it like?” Dustin asks.

“A mess!  The tower was old and dark.  It was damp and cold.  Every table was covered with strange machines we had built ourselves.”

“What kind of machines?”

“Oh, all sorts of things.  Leyden jars lined with metal foil.  Glass globes that spun and produced sparks when we rubbed them with silk.  We had brass rods sticking out of every window so we could try to catch electricity from passing storms.  It was a mess!  We were always building something.”  Then he chuckles.  “And it smelled terrible!”

“Why?” you ask.

“I kept jars full of rotting mud from the nearby lake in there, and those jars were horrible!”

Dustin stares at him.  “Why would you do that?”

“A fair question,” Volta laughs.  “I saw bubbles coming from the water.  Some strange gas was bubbling up from it.  I wanted to study the gas.”

“Sounds like a bad idea to me,” Dustin says.

“I was reading something by Benjamin Franklin at the time, and he had written about this gas.”  Volta looks at you.  “Do you know him?”

“Benjamin Franklin?  Yes, we know him,” you answer.

Then Volta continues.  “In the piece I was reading, Franklin wrote about a type of air that catches fire.  That was fascinating to me, and I found that the mud from my local lake produced that kind of gas.  So I had jars of the stuff, and I would collect the gas and then light it on fire with electric sparks.”

“So you blew things up?” Dustin asks, suddenly very interested.

“A great many things!” Volta smiles.  “It can get noisy around here sometimes.”

“Are you blowing things up right now?” Dustin eagerly asks.

“Unfortunately, no,” Volta says.  Then he points to a towering stack of metal discs on the table.  “I was working on these when you walked in.  Would you like to help me?”

You nod.  “What are these towers?”

“You said you know Benjamin Franklin?” Volta asks.

“Yes, we just spent a little time with him,” you say.  “We built a Leyden jar with him.”

“What did you think?” he asks.

“Well, it was a fun and surprising trick, but he said that it held some promise of an amazing power….”  Before you finish your sentence, Dustin interrupts.

“I just don’t see what is so amazing about it,” Dustin says.  “Zapping people is fun, but it isn’t amazing.  I think he is fooling himself.”

“You’re not convinced?” Volta asks.

“No,” Dustin confidently states.

“Perhaps I can change your mind,” Volta says.  “I think these towers begin to realize the power Franklin was talking about.”

“Look, before you begin, I am going to warn you,” Dustin says with his most adult voice.  “I’m not a little kid.  Franklin pulled out some buckets and filled them with water, and then tried to convince me about this or that, and it didn’t make any sense.  I could see right through it.”

Volta looks at you, a bit confused.  So you begin to explain.  “Franklin was making the point that electricity is like water,” you say.  “Water in a full bucket would flow into an empty bucket until the two buckets have the same amount.  Water tries to even out.  Franklin was saying that electricity is the same.  If one object has lots of electricity and another has little electricity, the electricity will flow to even everything out.  That’s all Franklin was trying to show us.”

“See?” Dustin says, feeling justified.  “Silliness.”

Volta ignores Dustin’s comment, and moves on.  “Let’s continue with Franklin’s illustration for a moment.  Franklin’s Leyden jars were like buckets of water.  Franklin learned how to fill a bucket with water.  The trouble was getting the water out of the bucket in a useful way.  For example, what would happen if you tried to power a water wheel by throwing a bucket of water on it?”

“It might move for a quick moment,” you offer, “but then it would stop.  Is that like the Leyden jar sparking for a moment, and then nothing else happening?”

“Yes, exactly,” Volta agrees.  “What do we need in order to really get that water wheel moving?”

“A continuous flow of water,” you say.  “Kind of like a fountain or a river.”

“Right.  That is the challenge with electricity.  To make electricity useful, we need a continuous flow.  But how do we get a continuous flow of electricity?”

“Have you figured it out?” you ask.

“I think I have,” Volta says, pointing to one of the little towers of metal discs.  “If Franklin’s Leyden jar is a bucket, this little tower is a river.” 

“How does it work?” you ask.

“I’ll show you,” he says.  “Look right over here.”

You get up close to one of the little towers, and—to your surprise—it works.  The little device is actually producing electricity.  It’s not much electricity, but it is a bit, a slow and steady stream.

Dustin remains unimpressed.  “It doesn’t seem very powerful,” he says.  “I thought we were going to blow something up.”

“We have no plans to blow something up,” Volta says.  “I will admit that this little tower is not powerful, but it is exciting.  It holds much promise.  We have found a way to create a continuous flow of electricity with this.  This isn’t like dumping a bucket on a water wheel.  It’s more like running a river—well, maybe a stream—through it.  That is a promising step.”