Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Ampére Museum
As an EE it was a great start to our abroad trip being able to nerd out at the Ampère Museum. After listening through the audible tour of the house it was astounding to learn that Ampère had self taught himself from a young age. He was able to develope the first type of portable energy source which he called the column which was composed of several layers of zinc and copper plates separated by an electrolytic liquid. Stacking this disks allowed for a higher voltage at the terminal ends. This can be thought of as batteries on series. It was interesting to discover the relationship between Ampère himself and Michael Farrady, another major contributor to the field of electromagnetism. Farraday's discovery of how magnetism can induce an electric current was a crucial achievment for modern electromagnetism. Seeing the equipment developed and used by Ampère was a humbling experience because it showed with what resources some of the most significant contributions to electrodynamics were made.
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As someone who doesn't know much about the technical details about electricity, I found it really interesting to see all the different equipment created for various experiments and the advances that were made. I also liked hearing about how the discovery was due to an observation that frog legs would move due to electricity. If I remember right, when hung outside to dry, they were touching two different metals and contained a slight acid which essentially created a battery.
ReplyDeleteI just realized by earlier comment didn't post.
ReplyDeleteI also found the Ampere House extremely interesting from a math and physics standpoint. As Alana was saying above, I found the battery demo and info to be very interesting. I never knew you could make a battery with a couple metals, small piece of tissue and some lemon juice. That was so neat!