Electricity is now the basic necessity of our lives, without electricity you could not read this article right now and it is not only because your computer wouldn’t work but unfortunately without electrical signals your brain wouldn’t work.
In reality very small electrical signals are running through our bodies that control everything we do. We know that everything is made up of Atoms and atoms contain neutron, protons and electrons. Neutron carries no charge, protons have positive charge and electrons have a negative charge. All these charged particles cancel each other effect and atom as a whole becomes a neutral particle. If this balance is disturbed an atom become either a positive or negative charged. This flow of charged particles is called electricity. As our body is composed of different atoms this means we can actually generate electricity from our body.
Electrical Signals
Our nervous system is continuously sending “Electrical signals” to brain. It means a very small magnitude of electrical signals is carrying signal to different parts of the body. An electrical charge is jumping from one cell to the next until it reaches its destination. These are electrical signal that tell our heart to speed up when we are in danger. But our heart pulse isn’t the only thing that relies on electrical impulses; almost all of our cells are capable of generating electricity.
Human Voltage
The phenomenon of electrical signals in human body is often referred to as sodium-potassium gate. In neutral condition our cells have more potassium ions inside than sodium ions. In neutral state the positive charge on sodium ion and negative charge on potassium ion cancels each other’s effect and no electrical signal is generated in neutral state.
When there is a need to send a message from one point to another the gate of the cell membrane open ups and sodium and potassium ions move freely in and out of the cell. This movement of positive and negative charges produces a switching in the form of 0 and 1 which ultimately results in an electrical pulse. This pulse triggers the gate of next cell to open and create another charge which travels all across the human body. That is how an electrical impulse moves from a nerve in your stubbed toe to your brain that senses pain.
These electrical signal are controlling our body and any breakdown in body’s electrical system is a real problem. That is why when you get an electric shock it interrupts the normal operations of your system it can result in heart palpitation (an extra heartbeat) or a lack of blood flow to the heart.
With so much electricity applications question is could human body generate enough electrical power that can be utilized for commercial applications? Well a human body can only generate 10-100 milli-volts which is quite low value of voltage and unfortunately cannot be used for operating any electrical system. Amazingly electric eels can produce 600 volts and if we create a machine that could gather millions of electric eels, probably we could generate enough electrical power that can be utilized for development purposes.