09.06 The Frog Who Discovered Electricity - by Robert Porter, Ph.D.

Thursday night, September 6, found Robert Porter addressing the topic all Sonoma County awaited: The Frog That Discovered Electricity. Given the rather puzzling title, he said he was surprised that people showed up, but show up they did and the show did go on. And on.

Right off, he admitted the title was misleading in that it was neither amphibian nor Frenchman who discovered that form of mysterious energy we commonly call electricity. Porter described a series of feeble attempts at explaining that Mysterious Something that makes for life as we know it. Over and over the mystery pivoted on some form of electricity as primitive science explained away one mystery by proposing another. The frog in the title was a dissected laboratory model, which unexpectedly twitched, jumped and did The Frog when two types of metal contacted the victim, which had long been dead. Frankenstein's Monster would have been so proud. As is usually the case in science, observation prompted new theory and then new experiments and so on until the present understanding of both electricity and living tissues resulted. In addition to gruesome lab work, he commented on the near-paranormal abilities of electric eels to produce lethal voltages and those of sharks to sense exquisitely tiny electric fields in prey and even rocks.

Robert Porter at Science Buzz Cafe on September 6th, 2007

Science Buzz Cafe, September 6th, 2007

Dakota tried the biofeedback device at Science Buzz Cafe, September 6th, 2007

Weld checked the biofeedback device at Science Buzz Cafe, September 6th, 2007

But if you want to know what really happened that night, here's the true story:

Robert Porter gave a cheesy introduction to the role electricity plays in living things. He started his talk by introducing a great green fuzzy that croaked out "Old MacDonald's Farm", or so Porter said. He pointed out that the stuffed frog represented the role played in discovering the mysterious role of electricity (as well as being powered by an internal battery; the toy, not the living Swamp Thing). Some creatures detect their prey with electric radar and then kill them with powerful electric shocks. At the opposite extreme from electrocution are sharks with their numerous teeth, and so sensitive to the electric fields their prey produce those fields are measured in billionths of a volt per centimeter. Ah, wonderful life. So exquisite, so astonishing, so delicious.