Volta's Frog's Leg Experiment - Electrolysis or Thermoelectricity?

All I'm saying here is that Professor L. I. Anatychuk of the Institute of Thermoelectricity in the Ukraine thinks that the muscular spasms observed in Volta's frog's leg experiments are the result of the thermoelectric effect acting in the metal rods.

And if you read Professor Anatychuk's papers on the subject at:

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- you will find that I am indeed perfectly correct about this.

Are there any specific parts of Professor Anatychuk's arguments which you disagree with?

Best regards,

Keith P Walsh

PS, Professor Anatychuk's credentials as an expert in the field of thermoelectrics are well established. NASA seems particularly appreciative of his efforts over the last 43 years - just search for Anatychuk at:

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And in the Ukraine they regard the old man as a bit of a Whizz, see "Anatychuk Honored" at:

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I'd be impressed to see you go up against him.

PPS, On 16 Oct I sent a reply to Androcles in this thread, posted to sci.physics, sci.materials and sci.med.dentistry, which began "Crank Professor?" and went on to describe Professor Anatychuk's standing in the field of thermoelectric science.

It looks like this reply has disappeared from the threads in all three newsgroups.

Evidence of it's existence can still be seen in in Adrocles' next follow-up, which begins by quoting my "Crank Professor?", and also in the Google result which I've just found searching Anatychuk Thermoelectric NASA (see below).

"Volta's Frog's Leg Experiment - Electrolysis or Thermoelectricity ...

16 Oct 2010 ... If you go to the website of The SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System at:
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- and search on the name Anatychuk, ..."

You can also find the message (#11 10-17-2010, 07:06 PM) still in the whole thread in a synch-copy of the sci.med.dentistry newsgroup at:

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Has this message been deliberately removed from the threads in the primary newsgroups?

And if so, why?

(I tell ya, if I was a conspiracy theorist......)

Reply to
Keith P Walsh
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Bullshit.

The source of electricity is trivially found with a multimeter one can buy brand new from radio shack for $16 and it isn't from thermoelecticity.

Reply to
jimp

it's -> its

Reply to
Autymn D. C.

Yes, but is it electrolysis or thermoelectricity?

It's important.

Reply to
Keith P Walsh

It is electrolysis which you can prove with a $16 multimeter from Radio Shack.

Reply to
jimp

One needs to have two junctions at significantly different temperatures to generate most forms of thermoelectricity. A dead frog can not generate a sufficient difference in temperature. If Professor Anatychuk can't show where the difference in temperature came from, then he is wrong. This is one of those cases where negative evidence is really evidence. I can see where the electrolytic solution came from (i.e., the frogs blood vessels), but I can't see where the temperature difference came from. Where in the link does Professor Anatychuk explain what cooled (or heated!) one junction more than the other?

Reply to
Darwin123

If you go to:

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- you will see a graphical representation of the frog's leg experiment.

It is perfectly reasonable to imagine that if the frog's leg had been kept in ice (zero degrees celsius), in order to preserve it, and the junction between the two metal rods had been held in the hand (let's say, 30 degrees celsius plus), then there exists an electric potential between the ends of the two dissimilar rods, where they are in contact with the respective extremities of the frog's leg, which is equivalent to the differential in the thermoelctric potential change over a temperature difference of around 30 degrees between copper and iron.

In a common "thermocouple" application the place of the frog's leg is taken by an instrument which will tell the operator how big this electrical potential is in terms of volts (ok, millivolts if you insist), or, more likely, directly in terms of the temperature difference between the joint and the ends connected to it (or even more directly, in terms of the temperature at the joint itself).

In the case of the dissected frog's leg, the leg simply jumps.

The degree to which the spasms in the frog's leg are due to thermoelectric phenomena depends entirely on whether the thermoelectric potential generated is large enough to trigger the neurological function in the leg.

Nevertheless, as far as I am aware there is no experimental evidence to suggest that the cause of the spasms is due to any electrolytic activity (i.e. formation of oxides, release of gaseous products, etc.).

One possible way to verify whether the primary cause of the muscular spasms was more likely to have been thermoelectric than electrolytic might be to repeat the experiment with the tips of the rods coated with a highly corrosion-resistant material (e.g., gold, or irridium). This would eliminate the electrolytic effect but not the thermoelectric one and therefore prove, possibly beyond any doubt, that the dominant effect either is thermoelectric or it isn't, but again it appears that no such experiment has ever been carried out. (And I swear, people have gotten PhDs for less!)

I've always gained the impression that the excitation of the dissected frog's leg came as a surprise to those who first witnessed it (Luigi Galvani is credited with first having described it; Alessandro Volta is credited with having given a better explanation for it after repeating Galvani's experiments.)

This suggests to me that, if the cause is due to thermoelectricity, then it would seem that this effect, having been discovered essentially by accident, would be most likely to have occurred with the application of only modest temperature gradients acting in the right places.

In any case, I suspect that Professor Anatychuk understands thermoelectric phenomena much better than you do (Much, much better, actually). And I remain unconvinced that your doubts about his claims are justified.

Best regards,

Keith P Walsh

PS, Do you have any experimental evidence to suggest that frog's blood is acidic enough to drive an electrolytic reaction? Or are you just presuming it?

Reply to
Keith P Walsh

You simply take a high impedance voltmeter, available these days at Radio Shack for less than $10, and measure the voltage across each junction.

That will tell you with certainty where the voltage comes from.

Volta did not have access to high impedance voltmeters in his day and guessed.

Now we do and we know the voltage comes from the metal-frog junction so by definition it is not a thermoelectric effect.

Reply to
jimp

I think that you have completely failed to grasp the point of this thread.

Professor L. I. Anatychuk is the president of the International Thermoelectric Academy.

He wrote the book on thermoelectricity, see:

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He's been an expert on the subject for more than forty years, and his papers are referenced by NASA - search Anatychuk at

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And he thinks that the electrical potential driving the frog's leg convulsions is a THERMOELECTRIC effect, see,

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On the other hand your just some wannabe "scientist" who sits at the keyboard making up garbage and convincing yourself that it must be true for no other reason than you're the one who made it up.

(Same applies to Darwin123.)

Who should we believe?

I for one have no doubt about it.

Keith P Walsh

Reply to
Keith P Walsh

There is no point to this thread.

Irrelevant.

Irrelevant.

Irrelevant.

It doesn't matter what anyone thinks, what matters is what can be measured.

Babble and whine all you want, but the fact remains that anyone with a $10 meter from Radio Shack can make measurements that show beyond a doubt that the effect is NOT thermoelectric.

The ones that make measurments.

You for one, are a babbling kook.

Reply to
jimp

I was researching Professor Anatychuk's credentials in order to produce a further rejoinder to your latest contribution, when I came across an article entitled:

"Human-Implantable Thermoelectric Devices"

One particular phrase which caught my eye was:

"- take advantage of the [temperature] gradients within the body between the core and the skin, generally 2-7'C, - "

So you see, significant thermoelectric potentials can be generated from only modest temperature gradients.

If there are any genuine scientists following this thread you may be interested to read the whole article at:

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Keith P Walsh

Reply to
Keith P Walsh

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Once again, it makes no difference what a person thinks no matter what their credentials are.

The only thing that matters is repeatable observation, i.e. measurement, which says the voltage in Volta's frog leg experiment comes from electrolysis, not thermoelectricity.

Your kook babble is trumped by empirical observation.

Reply to
jimp

To set the record straight:

  1. Volta's friend Luigi Galvani was a physician and while experimenting with frogs legs, he observed that under certain conditions the muscles of dead frogs legs twitched.

  1. Unlike Galvani who thought that "animal electricity" originated in the muscle his friend Alessandro Volta, who was a physicist who made advances in static electricity, etc., thought that the effect was caused by physical phenomenon.

  2. Volta experimented and discovered that a voltage existed between two metals separated by an electrolytic, and that by alternating sets of "batteries" he could increase the intensity of the voltage, and by increasing the cross-sectional area of the interacting surfaces, he could increase the current flow.

  1. This was one of the greatest inventions of all time and lead to immediate and rapid advances in electricity, electronics, chemistry.

  2. Man had known of, and experimented with, STATIC electric for centuries before Volta, and his invention of the battery provided man with his first sustainable source of electrical power.

There would have been no big advances in chemistry, magnetism, and electricity if Volta had not invented the battery.

Reply to
Tom Potter

As indeed there was never an industrial revolution because Hero(n) regarded the steam powered rocket as a toy. Oops, sorry, wrong universe.

UU

Reply to
Usernet User

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