I’m sure that you’ve used a battery before, probably without a second thought, but have you ever stopped to wonder how they came to be?

Voltaic cells, also known as batteries, use a chemical reaction known as an oxidation-reduction reaction to create electricity and power the world around us. It all started almost two hundred and fifty years ago, with scientists Galvani and Volta. And a frog. Supposedly, Galvani was examining a dead frog and accidentally brushed a nerve in its leg with a metal tool. This made its leg muscle jerk, a phenomenon which Galvani called “animal electricity”. Another scientist, Volta, disagreed. He said that it was the metal in the tool in action. This debate continued between the two scientists until Volta finally settled it with a groundbreaking experiment. He created a stack of alternating materials; zinc and copper. The layers were separated by paper or cloth soaked in saltwater. What occurred was what scientists now call oxidation and reduction.

The zinc oxidizes or loses electrons, which are then gained by the ion in the water, producing hydrogen gas. This was an incredible discovery, that we honour today by naming the standard unit of electricity the volt.