What is the "new power of nature" that Equality 7-2521 discovers while cutting open a dead frog?

Equality 7-2521 does not know the origins of the particular power he has discovered, but, when he experiments on a dead frog, he sees its leg jerking. After many experiments, he finds that the copper wire on which the frog hangs has somehow combined with the metal in his knife to create the leg jerk. He puts a piece of copper and a piece of zinc into a jar of salty water and connects them with a wire to create this new power.

He is fascinated by what he has discovered, and sees that it defies all the currently known laws of nature. He has been taught by his society that lodestones in compasses always point north, but now he sees that the new power makes the needle of a compass move. He also discovers that, in thunderstorms, if he puts a tall iron rod next to the entrance of the tunnel, the iron will draw the lightning. He reasons that the new power causes lightning -- a radically new notion.