Spark
The Life of Electricity and the Electricity of Life
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
A fresh look at electricity and its powerful role in life on Earth
When we think of electricity, we likely imagine the energy humming inside our home appliances or lighting up our electronic devices—or perhaps we envision the lightning-streaked clouds of a stormy sky. But electricity is more than an external source of power, heat, or illumination. Life at its essence is nothing if not electrical.
The story of how we came to understand electricity’s essential role in all life is rooted in our observations of its influences on the body—influences governed by the body’s central nervous system. Spark explains the science of electricity from this fresh, biological perspective. Through vivid tales of scientists and individuals—from Benjamin Franklin to Elon Musk—Timothy Jorgensen shows how our views of electricity and the nervous system evolved in tandem, and how progress in one area enabled advancements in the other. He explains how these developments have allowed us to understand—and replicate—the ways electricity enables the body’s essential functions of sight, hearing, touch, and movement itself.
Throughout, Jorgensen examines our fascination with electricity and how it can help or harm us. He explores a broad range of topics and events, including the Nobel Prize–winning discoveries of the electron and neuron, the history of experimentation involving electricity’s effects on the body, and recent breakthroughs in the use of electricity to treat disease.
Filled with gripping adventures in scientific exploration, Spark offers an indispensable look at electricity, how it works, and how it animates our lives from within and without.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Jorgensen (Strange Glow), the director of Georgetown University's health physics graduate program, delivers a fascinating history of humanity's gradual understanding of electricity. "Electricity is the foundation of life," he writes, before exploring a dizzying array of topics: lightning experiments, fish behavior, neurotoxins, prosthetics, and human senses among them. All are painstakingly researched and explained with plenty of anecdotes and profiles of scientists throughout history. Among them are Alexander von Humboldt, an 18th-century naturalist who studied electric eels, and Luigi Galvani, an Italian scientist of the same era who believed that animals' twitching legs were a result of internal electricity. Along the way, concepts such as voltage, resistance, neurons, and ion channels are explored alongside their discoverers, and the dual perspective makes for an accessible crash course. Jorgensen's study is full of entertaining details, and his passion is evident: "Electricity is a powerful force of nature that everyone deals with to one extent or another. If we all become a little more knowledgeable about it, our society can use electricity's many powers more wisely." The result is a sparkling reminder of the strange wonders of life.
