A few years ago my son did a science fair experiment on electricity from
fruits and vegetables and got the best results from cabbage. It beat lemon
and that surprised me.
Larry



At 02:08 AM 2/28/02 -0600, you wrote:
>I recently have been experimenting with fruit batteries. My daughter's
>boyfriend came to me needing help with a school science project where he
>needed to build a car that was propelled with a "chemical reaction". His
>first thought was to use vinegar and baking soda to drive a pneumatic motor,
>which weighed about five pounds! Unfortunately, by the time he would have
>built a car big enough to support all of the equipment needed to generate
>enough gas to drive the car, the thing would have needed several pounds of
>soda and several gallons of vinegar!!!
>
>I suggested driving a hobby DC motor/gear box combination with a fruit
>battery. Slipping all of the interceding research, I found that plastic soda
>bottle caps arranged in a honeycomb pattern (for density) filled with lemon
>juice work the best. Each battery cell was filled roughly half with juice
>and I used common zinc galvanized nails and copper mesh for the electrodes
>(The copper mesh provided a greater surface area for the chemical reaction
>to occur and produced about three times the current output when compared to
>a copper nail).
>
>Lemons work the best of all fruits (apples, oranges, lemon, limes, etc.)
>that I tried. Other foods I tried included [chilli] peppers and potatoes
>(potatoes are rechargeable!). The general rule of thumb is that a whole
>lemon will produce approximately 1 mA at 1 Vdc. I used the bottle caps to
>reduce the weight of the battery.
>
>Hope that helps...
>
>Douglas Wood
>Software Engineer
>dbwood@kc.rr.com
>
>Home of the EPICIS Development System for the PIC and SX
>http://epicis.piclist.com
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Tony Brewer" <tonybrewer@BIGFOOT.COM>
>To: <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
>Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2002 5:03 PM
>Subject: [PIC]: Potato Powered PIC?
>
>
> > Is is possible to power the 12C508A using potatoes?
> > Or would some other vegetable or fruit work better?
> > Don't laugh, these are serious questions! :o)
> >
> > Tony B.
> >
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Larry G. Nelson Sr.
mailto:L.Nelson@ieee.org
http://www.ultranet.com/~nr

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