Volta, Count

Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (Count) (1745-1827) Italian physicist Como, Italy. 

Consider the case of a junction between two different metals a and p. Generally, they will have different values of the Fermi energy and work function. Between the two metals, a certain Volta potential will be set up. This implies that the outer potentials at points a and b, which are just outside the two metals, are different. However, it will be preferable to count the Fermi levels or electrochemical potentials from a common point of reference. This can be either point a or point b. Since these two points are located in the same phase, the potential difference between them (the Vofta potential) can be measured. Hence, values counted from one of the points of reference are readily converted to the other point of reference when required. 

Galvanic cells are named after the Italian doctor Luigi Galvani (1737-1798), who generated electricity using two metals. These cells are also called voltaic cells, after the Italian physicist Count Alessandro Volta (1745-1827), who built the first chemical batteries. 

Humphry Davy was not only an exceptionally gifted scientist, he also had remarkable social talents, and it is typical of him that already as a young man his career was sponsored by such luminaries in British science as Sir Joseph Banks, Henry Cavendish and Benjamin Thompson (Count von Rumford). He was also a great communicator, who from an early age made a name for himself in the popularization of science. At the same time, he had an intuition in scientific matters that allowed him to select problems that would prove to be fruitful and important. His work on electrolysis using Alessandro Volta s newly invented pile is a good example of this. He was convinced that in electrolysis the current induced the separation of compounds into their elementary components rather than the synthesis of new substances, as many scientists believed at the time. 

Potentiometry—the measurement of electric potentials in electrochemical cells—is probably one of the oldest methods of chemical analysis still in wide use. The early, essentially qualitative, work of Luigi Galvani (1737-1798) and Count Alessandro Volta (1745-1827) had its first fruit in the work of J. Willard Gibbs (1839-1903) and Walther Nernst (1864-1941), who laid the foundations for the treatment of electrochemical equilibria and electrode potentials. The early analytical applications of potentiometry were essentially to detect the endpoints of titrations. More extensive use of direct potentiometric methods came after Haber developed the glass electrode for pH measurements in 1909. In recent years, several new classes of ion-selective sensors have been introduced, beginning with glass electrodes more or less selectively responsive to other univalent cations (Na, NH ", etc.). Now, solid-state crystalline electrodes for ions such as F , Ag", and sulfide, and liquid ion-exchange membrane electrodes responsive to many simple and complex ions—Ca , BF4", CIO "—provide the chemist with electrochemical probes responsive to a wide variety of ionic species. 

In 1801, Volta demonstrated his battery in Paris before Napoleon, who made Volta a count and senator of the Kingdom of Lombardy. 

The volt is the SI unit of electric potential. One volt is the difference of potential between two points of an electical conductor when a current of 1 ampere flowing between those points dissipates a power of 1 watt. It is named after the Italian physicist Count Alessandro Giuseppe Anastasio Volta (1745-1827). 

Count Alessandro Giuseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta (1745-1827). ItaUan physicist. Volta showed that animal tissue was not necessary for the conduction of electricity, as had been hypothesized by Galvani. He invented the first electric (or voltaic) pile—a prototype battery consisting of alternating discs of dissimilar metals (for example, copper and zinc) separated by cardboard soaked in saltwater. 

The volt Is named for Alessandro GulseppI Antonio Anastaslo Volta, 1745-1827, the Italian chemist who Invented the first practical electrochemical cell around 1799. He was made a count by Napoleon in 1801. 

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