Electricity – Video 5 – Second Timers Quiz

THE ELECTRIC EEL: The electric eel can grow to be a whopping 10 feet long!

THE ELECTRIC EEL: The electric eel can have 50,000-60,000 electrocytes in its body. The electric eel can give a charge of 600 volts which could kill an animal.

The discharge, though, is for a duration of 2 milliseconds. This is too short to kill a person. We have to have sustained current for it to impact us in a big way.

THE ELECTRIC EEL:  One way natives capture the eel in the Amazon River is to catch it with rubber gloves and tease it over and over. The eel keeps sending out charges until it wears itself out. Then it is easy to pick up.

THE ELECTRIC EEL: The electric eel is believed to the the inspiration of Luigi Galvani’s 1799 world’s first battery.

THE ELECTRIC EEL: The thousands of flattened pancake cells in each electrocyte have calcium ion pumping proteins all over their surfaces that pump calcium ions outside of the cells–like a nerve cell does.

THE ELECTRIC EEL: Each electrocyte cluster makes a wimpy 1/7 volt charge–1/20th that of a mini-mag.

THE ELECTRIC EEL: All the electrocytes are hooked together in series and collectively rocket out a huge 600-volt blast when the sodium gates are all instantaneously opened! It’s enough to kill an animal.

THE ELECTRIC EEL: Apparently the electric eels can turn on their electro-protection systems because eels shock each other as part of their mating ritual.

THE ELECTRIC EEL: Alessandro Volta’s 1899 first battery was called the voltaic pile.

PLATYPUS: The platypus doesn’t generate electricity. The bill (nose) of a platypus has electricity detectors that it waves back and forth in saccade movements.