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They create this electrical potential using energy from food. But sadly, these charges are useless for shocking your enemies. First of all, the charge is very tiny. But when the eel feels that a zap is in order, these cells do something very cool. They polarize, creating a positive and negative side, sort of like a battery. This charge difference across the cell creates a small electrical field of about 0.
But a charge of 0. But when the eel wants to impart an electric shock, its body opens some of the channels and closes others.
Like an electric switch, this now lets positively charged ions flow in one side of the channels and out the other. As they move, these ions build a positive electric charge in some places. This creates a negative charge in other places. That difference in charges sparks a trickle of electricity in each electrocyte.
With so many electrocytes, those trickles add up. Together, they can produce a jolt strong enough to stun fish — or fell a horse. The new artificial organ uses its own version of electrocytes. It looks nothing like an eel, or a battery. Instead, colored dots cover two sheets of transparent plastic. The whole system resembles a couple of sheets of colorful, fluid-filled bubble wrap.
The color of each dot denotes a different gel. One sheet hosts red and blue dots. Salt water is the main ingredient in the red dots. The blue dots are made from freshwater. A second sheet has green and yellow dots. The green gel contains positively charged particles. The yellow gel has negatively charged ions. The red and blue dots on one sheet will nestle between green and yellow ones on the other sheet.
Those red and blue dots act like the channels in the electrocytes. They will let charged particles flow between the green and yellow dots. Just as in an eel, this movement of charge makes a tiny trickle of electricity.
And also as in an eel, a lot of dots together can impart a real jolt. In lab tests, the scientists were able to generate volts. The team reported its initial results in Nature last December.
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