7 September 16

This tie featuring frogs was a birthday present from Nathanael and his family. Today I'm jumping ahead to Friday to honor the birthday of Luigi Galvani (1737-1798), an early experimenter with electricity. Galvani is famous for reporting how frogs' legs would "jump" when touched with an electrically charged rod, even though they were not attached to a frog! The idea that mundane, ordinary electricity worked inside living organisms was revolutionary because it contradicted the beliefs about a "vital force" that separated living things from the rest of the world.