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THE LEMON BATTERY
Posted Date:
Total Responses: 0
Posted By: CONFIDENCE IS THE COMPANION OF SUCCESS Member Level: Gold Points/Cash: 7
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| The status of this Project is Deleted. |
Materials:
- a lemon
- a strip of copper
- a strip of zinc
- a voltmeter
- two cables with alligator clips
- a thermometer or clock with an LCD display
Roll the lemon firmly with the palm of your hand on a tabletop or other hard surface in order to break up some of the small sacks of juice within the lemon. Insert the two metal strips deeply into the lemon, being careful that the strips not touch each other. Using the voltmeter, measure the voltage produced between the two strips . It should show to be about one volt.
It would be nice to be able to illuminate a light bulb using your new lemon powered battery, but unfortunately it is not strong enough. If you were to try to light a bulb using this setup, the voltage across the strips would fall immediately to zero. Given this, if you want to demonstrate that the current produced by this battery is capable of powering something, try with a small device that uses an LCD display. A clock or a thermometer usually works well. An
LCD display consumes an extremely small amount of current and your lemon battery is able to adequately drive this type of device. Remove any conventional battery that is in your clock or thermometer and power it with your lemon battery. You should see the device recommence functioning normally. If not, try swapping the polarity of the electricity from your lemon battery. This system allows you to demonstrate that the battery is producing energy even if you don't have a voltmeter.
How does this battery work? The Copper (Cu) atoms attract electrons more than do the Zinc (Zn) atoms. If you place a piece of copper and a piece of zinc in contact with each other, many electrons will pass from the zinc to the copper.
As they concentrate on the copper, the electrons repel each other. When the force of repulsion between electrons and the force of attraction of electrons to the copper become equalized, the flow of electrons stops. Unfortunately there is no way to take advantage of this behavior to produce electricity because the flow of charges stops almost immediately. On the other hand, if you bathe the two strips in a conductive solution, and connect them externally with a wire, the reactions between the electrodes and the solution furnish the circuit with charges continually. In this way, the process that produces the electrical energy continues and becomes useful.
As a conductive solution, you can use any electrolyte, whether it be an acid, base or salt solution. The lemon battery works well because the lemon juice is acidic. Try the same setup with other types of solutions. As you may know, other fruits and vegetables also contain juices rich in ions and are therefore good electrical conductors. You are not then, limited to using lemons in this type of battery, but can make batteries out of every type of fruit or vegetable that you wish.
Like any battery, this type of battery has a limited life. The electrodes undergo chemical reactions that block the flow of electricity. The electromotive force diminishes and the battery stops working. Usually, what happens is the production of hydrogen at the copper electrode and the zinc electrode acquires deposits of oxides that act as a barrier between the metal and the electrolyte.
This is referred to as the electrodes being polarized. To achieve a longer life and higher voltages and current flows, it is necessary to use electrolytes better suited for the purpose. Commercial batteries, apart from their normal electrolyte, contain chemicals with an affinity for hydrogen which combine with the hydrogen before it can polarize the electrodes.
 Attachments
Lemon Battery
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| Author: Radi | Member Level: Gold | Revenue Score:  | Reason for deletion of the project: Contents copied from other sites.
http://www.funsci.com/fun3_en/electro/electro.htm
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