Batteries generate electricity through a chemical
reaction between two different electrodes and one electrolyte. Use of Copper
and Zinc electrodes and Sulfuric acid as electrolyte is a proven method for
this process. We are wondering if we can use any other liquid as electrolyte?
This gave us the idea of using a potato as electrolyte. After all a fresh
potato has a lot of juice that may serve our purpose as electrolyte.
Problem:
Can Potato be used to generate electricity?
Hypothesis:
Potato juice contains many water soluble
chemicals that may cause a chemical reaction with one or both of our
electrodes. So we may get some electricity from that.
Material:
For
this experiment we use:
- A fresh potato
- Copper Electrode
- Zinc Electrode
- A Digital or
Analog Multimeter to measure Voltage or Current of produced electricity.
- Alligator clips/ Leads
Procedure:
We insert copper and zinc electrodes in to the
potato, close but not touching each other. We use Clip leads to connect our
electrodes to the Multimeter to measure voltage between two electrodes or
current passing through the multimeter. For this experiment we removed the
shell of a broken AA battery for our Zinc electrode. (Make sure to test your
multimeter by connecting its Positive and Negative wires to each other that
should show no current and no voltage).
We repeated this experiment with some other fruits and all resulted almost the
same. In all cases the produced voltage is between 1 and 1.5 volts, and in all
cases they do not produce enough current to turn on a small light
Another thing that we learned from this
experiment is that creating electricity and making a battery is easy, the main
challenge is producing a battery that can continue to produce larger amount of
electricity for larger amount of time
By connecting multiple potato batteries you can
make enough electricity to light-up a super bright light emitting diode
(Included in the kit).
why potato can cahnge a batery???? what material in potato is same with the batery ?
BalasHapuswhy your experiment,, choosing potatoes?
BalasHapuscan use,, Cassava? please explain to me ..
what all the potato can produce electricity? Are different electrical charges between big potatoes and small potatoes? please explain
BalasHapuswhy the experiment potato can produce electricity??
BalasHapus