The Legacy of the Faraday Constant

The story of the now-everyday constant involves a device you can build at home, a brilliant man, and an honor that rivals a Nobel Prize

The turn of the 19th century saw a flurry of chemical research. Antoine Lavoisier had started what some would call “the chemical revolution” to bring chemistry to the forefront as a legitimate science. John Dalton was hypothesizing the existence of atoms, and Alessandro Volta created the world’s first battery.

The latter creation is going to kick off this story — Volta developed what became known as the “voltaic pile” after he studied Luigi Galvani’s work on developing an electrical circuit used to stimulate muscles. “Voltaic pile” is quite a literal nickname: it was a pile consisting of alternating stacked zinc and copper (or zinc and silver) discs with a saltwater soaked cloth in between every other disc. You can actually build this device at home and use it to power something — I’ve done it, and I’ll break it down in a later story.

Did you know that “piles” is British slang for hemorrhoids? Anyways, here’s a replica of a voltaic pile | Source

Prior to the creation of this device, scientists didn’t really have many alternatives for creating a stable electrical current. The closest suitable option would have been the Leyden jar, but it was not nearly as useful as the voltaic pile. Because of this newfound utility, a lot…