• Question: how do you measure electrical activity? Thank you

    Asked by to Nancy on 17 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Nancy Carlisle

      Nancy Carlisle answered on 17 Jun 2014:

      We have ‘electrodes’ that record the electrical activity. Lots of types of metal are ‘conductors’, meaning that electricity can move through the metal. We take electrodes and connect them to a special signal amplifier that increases the strength of the signal (the size of the signals we measure are really small- much smaller than that of the electric shock you can get after walking around in socks and then touching something metal!). This amplified signal is then digitized and sent to a computer where we can see the signals drawn out on the computer screen.
      That was a pretty technical answer- not sure if that was what you were interested in!

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