Electric organ (biology) in research because of their resemblance to nerve-muscle junctions. The stack of electrocytes has long been compared to a voltaic pile, and may even have inspired the invention of the battery, since the analogy was already noted by Alessandro Volta. While the electric organ is structurally similar to a battery, its cycle of operation is more like a Marx generator, in that the individual elements are slowly charged in parallel, then suddenly and nearly simultaneously discharged in series to produce a high voltage pulse. To discharge the electrocytes at the correct time, the electric eel uses its pacemaker nucleus, a
Volta potential electrostatic potentials, but instead the difference in Fermi level between the two materials, a difference that is exactly zero at equilibrium. The Volta potential however corresponds to a real electric field in the spaces between and around the two metal objects, a field generated by the accumulation of charges at their surfaces. The total charge formula_2 over each objects' surface depends on the capacitance formula_3 between the two objects, by the relation formula_4 where formula_5 is the Volta potential. It follows therefore that the value of the potential can be measured by varying the capacitance between the materials by a