Talk:Electricity

{{Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Electricity/1}}

"According to a controversial theory, the Parthians may have had knowledge of electroplating, based on the 1936 discovery of the Baghdad Battery, which resembles a galvanic cell, though it is uncertain whether the artifact was electrical in nature."

According to a controversial theory the Great Pyramid of Giza was built by aliens, but we don't mention that. A large portion of the page on the Baghdad Battery is dedicated to explaining why the theory is disagreed with, because basically every modern archaeologist agrees that it's not a battery. It's a theory from the 1930s that even at the time stood on relatively tentative evidence but which today is pretty confidently agreed to be wrong.

So describing it as "a controversial theory" here is misleading, it implies there's at least a degree of mainstream scientific support for the theory still, which there is not. A better phrasing would be "a now discredited theory", or even to just omit the sentence (it's in truth not really relevant to a brief overview of the history of electricity). 2A02:C7C:C4CD:A500:FC26:956F:AE45:BBF8 (talk) 19:33, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

{{edit semi-protected|Electricity|answered=yes}}

The second sentence of the Electricity article's History section claims that Ancient Egyptian texts refer to electric fish as "Thunderer of the Nile" in a (fair) misinterpretation of the text being cited, under cite note 2 of the article. The text from the citation states:

{{Blockquote|Long before the true nature of electricity was known, ancient Egyptians (2750 BC) revered the "thunderer of the Nile," the electric catfish Malapterurus electricus, as the protector of fish.{{citation|title=Review: Electric Fish|first1=Peter|last1=Moller|journal=BioScience|volume=41|issue=11|date=December 1991|pages=794–96 [794]|doi=10.2307/1311732|jstor=1311732|publisher=American Institute of Biological Sciences|last2=Kramer|first2=Bernd}}}}

The cited text does not claim that Ancient Egyptian texts themselves refer to electric fish as "Thunderer of the Nile," rather suggesting that the term was being used by the author as a synonym for the fish. To support this, the claim that ancient Egyptian texts used this name erroneously suggests that ancient Egyptians knew of a link between the electric fish and thunder, long before the nature of lightning was ever known to be caused by the same forces as the electric fish.

Please change:

{{Blockquote|Ancient Egyptian texts dating from 2750 BCE referred to these fish as the "Thunderer of the Nile", and described them as the "protectors" of all other fish.}}

to:

{{Blockquote|Ancient Egyptian texts dating from 2750 BCE referred to these fish as the protector of other fish.}}

I don't see the term "Thunderer of the Nile" as originating in the [https://www.jstor.org/stable/1311732 referenced document]. For one thing, I find the same term describing the electric catfish Malapterurus, in an [https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Eclectic_Magazine_and_Monthly_Edition_of/gD4zAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=%22Thunderer+of+the+Nile%22&pg=PA48&printsec=frontcover 1892 article] of the The Eclectic Magazine written by John Gray McKendrick, its wording suggesting that the term is much older in origin. —BillC ^talk 08:52, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

:The wording for this request may not have been clear enough. The term was being used by the author as a synonym for the fish, and this usage does not suggest that the synonym originated from ancient Egyptian texts. The current Electricity article outright claims that the ancient Egyptian texts refer to these fish as the "Thunderer of the Nile," and the cited source makes no such claim. 2605:8600:560:AB14:B5CE:3B7A:38D7:1F94 (talk) 17:54, 14 April 2024 (UTC)

::{{done}}. The source does not say the Ancient Egyptians called it that. I removed "Thunderer" completely because the nickname seems unnecessary. HansVonStuttgart (talk) 12:43, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

{{reflist-talk}}

this text had no referenced "This attitude began with the 1771 experiments of Luigi Galvani in which the legs of dead frogs were shown to twitch on application of animal electricity. "Revitalization" or resuscitation of apparently dead or drowned persons was reported in the medical literature shortly after Galvani's work. These results were known to Mary Shelley when she authored Frankenstein (1819), although she does not name the method of revitalization of the monster. The revitalization of monsters with electricity later became a stock theme in horror films." Reza Amper (talk) 06:48, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

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The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electrism&redirect=no Electrism] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at {{section link|1=Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 April 29#Electrism}} until a consensus is reached. Duckmather (talk) 02:07, 29 April 2025 (UTC)