The Invention of Batteries

 In 1800, Alessandro Volta famously published his findings on electricity and in doing so revealed to the world his invention of the first electric battery. Volta was influnced by fellow Italian scientist Luigi Galvani and his theory of animal electricity. He proposed that the fluids present in a frog’s body, when touched with metal, would cause an electrical contraction of the muscle fiber. Experiments conducted nearly fifteen years later by Volta would correct this inaccurate finding. These would become the basis for his invention of the electrochemical battery.

 Volta rightly found that it was in fact the contact of the two metals with acidic fluids in the animal which produced a current. Thus, starting in 1794, Volta began to experiment further by submerging different metals in acid thereby discovering that an electrical interaction without the presence of animal tissue was indeed possible. This was the major breakthrough in the development of his first battery.

 The world’s first battery, the volatic pile, was an electric circuit in the shape of a column and held in place by three glass tubes. It was a 30cm stack of electrolyte-soaked cloths sandwiched between current generating, disc shaped electrodes of zinc and copper. The bottom copper disc was the positive cathode while the negative anode was the top zinc disc. Volta’s device laid the fundamental groundwork for all future electrochemical batteries which converted chemical energy into electricity.

1. The author’s main purpose in paragraph 2 is to

(A) describe some of Volta’s early experimental findings

(B) show how Volta criticized Luigi Galvani’s methodology

(C) demonstrate how Volta influenced fellow Italian scientists

(D) contrast the properties of different metals and animal fluids

2. Why does the author mention the volatic pile in the passage?

(A) To explain the shape of the world’s first battery

(B) To illustrate that people did not use the word “battery” at first

(C) To show that the world’s first battery was named after Volta

(D) To provide an example of a modern electrochemical battety