In this Book
- Spark from the Deep: How Shocking Experiments with Strongly Electric Fish Powered Scientific Discovery
- Book
- 2013
- Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
- Series: Animals, History, Culture
summary
How encounters with strongly electric fish informed our grasp of electricity.Spark from the Deep tells the story of how human beings came to understand and use electricity by studying the evolved mechanisms of strongly electric fish. These animals have the ability to shock potential prey or would-be predators with high-powered electrical discharges.William J. Turkel asks completely fresh questions about the evolutionary, environmental, and historical aspects of people’s interest in electric fish. Stimulated by painful encounters with electric catfish, torpedos, and electric eels, people learned to harness the power of electric shock for medical therapies and eventually developed technologies to store, transmit, and control electricity. Now we look to these fish as an inspiration for engineering new sensors, computer interfaces, autonomous undersea robots, and energy-efficient batteries.
Table of Contents
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- Acknowledgments
- pp. ix-xi
- Introduction
- pp. 1-6
- 1 Strongly Electric Fish
- pp. 7-35
- 2 Modeling Animal Electricity
- pp. 36-64
- 3 Electrophysiology
- pp. 65-92
- 4 The Spark of Life
- pp. 93-122
- 5 Evolutionary Theories
- pp. 123-148
- 6 Electric Currents
- pp. 149-177
- 7 Discovering Electric Worlds
- pp. 178-205
- Bibliography
- pp. 237-276
Additional Information
ISBN
9781421409948
Related ISBN(s)
9781421409818
MARC Record
OCLC
854901470
Pages
304
Launched on MUSE
2013-08-13
Language
English
Open Access
No