Frog Galvanoscope | Hacker News Reader

Frog Galvanoscope

en.wikipedia.org

67 pointsarittr16 comments

  >This research included the muscular response to opiates and static electricity, for which experiments the spinal cord and rear legs of a frog were dissected out together and the skin removed. In 1781,[5] an observation was made while a frog was being so dissected. An electric machine discharged just at the moment one of Galvani's assistants touched the crural nerve of a dissected frog with a scalpel. The frog's legs twitched as the discharge happened.

Just picturing this wild lab where you've got assistants preparing opiates, dissected frogs layed out with metal wires being attached to them, and spark-generating machines zapping in the background. What a scene, man.

See also Frog Battery: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frog_battery

    > The major drawback of the frog galvanoscope is that the frog leg frequently needs replacing. The leg will continue to respond for up to 44 hours, but after that a fresh one must be prepared.

All throughout reading this article I asked myself just how long a frog leg can be usable, considering nerves decompose quicky. It's answered towards the end with 44h, which is... a lot, and yet almost nothing for what you expect of a tool.

The tool is the pipe, wires, ... The frogs leg is not the tool, that's like fuel for a chain saw.

Yeah, if you couldn’t store chain saw fuel because it decomposed in 44h…

I don't know how difficult the process of skinning a frog leg is, but I imagine it's not too much effort to just keep some live frogs on hand and do that every two days.

Easier than refining petrol anyway.

My point was petrol can be stored. It doesn’t decompose like frog legs do. Yes I get both are consumed, but one is through the use of the tool and the other is just rotting meat. It’s a strange comparison.

Pre dinner snack you might eat two frogs with beers.

Mini frogs after clubbing probably half a dozen. These days you should be able to minuterize the tech a lot more.

They are not hard to get like rhino horn.

But a lot are frozen and come in from big (Vietnamese) farms these days.

Will thawed frozen legs work?

Hey, I submitted this six years ago! ;-)

https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Frog%20galvanoscope&type=story...

It's ammeter not ampmeter?

Correct: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammeter Technically Am-meter is short for Ampere-meter. To me Ampmeter sounds like a much cleaner contraction, but it is what it is.

"Ampmeter" sounds like a unit of current per distance.

I wish there were numbers attached. I'm curious how sensitive it is.

56000x more sensitive then most sensitive condensing electrometer

Are there people who make this old science stuff for presentations? I'd love to see these things in action.

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