It might not save a ton of energy. But a little goes a long way. With a potato battery, of course! A potato battery is an electrochemical battery. This is also called an electrochemical cell. These cells are places where the chemical energy is turned into electrical energy through the sudden transfer of electrons. And the potatoes are just a barrier that keeps the two metals from fighting and making heat.
Take the LED clock you just bought. It should have a battery compartment in the back. Remove the battery. Look at where the positive end and the negative end of the battery went. You want to write down or remember these points. They will be useful later. Additionally, boiling the potato breaks down the resistance inherent in the dense flesh so that electrons can flow more freely, which significantly bumps up the overall electrical output.
Cutting the potato up into four or five pieces, they researchers found, made it even more efficient. The potato battery kit, which includes two metal electrodes and alligator clips, is easy to assemble and, some parts, such as the zinc cathode, can be inexpensively replaced. The finished device Rabinowitch came up with is designed so that a new boiled potato slice can be inserted in between the electrodes after the potato runs out of juice. Alligator clips that transport the current carrying wires are attached to the electrodes and the negative and positive input points of the light bulb.
Despite the advantages, a recent BBC report that followed up on the group's initial discovery found that the group has since been beset with a number of extenuating circumstances that have hindered their efforts to scale up their idea to places like villages in off-the-grid parts in Africa and India. Economically speaking, food-based energy systems can only be viable as long as they don't eat into the needed food supply and that such enterprises don't compete with farmers who grow them for market.
The technology is also having a difficult time establishing a niche among more fashionable forms of alternative energy like solar and wind power, where infrastructure and investment seems to be headed mostly.
The energy does not come from the potato itself. What happens is that the zinc is oxidized inside the potato, exchanging some of its electrons with the potato acid in order to reach a lower energy state, and the energy released provides the electrical power.
Let's imagine first that we have one potato and the zinc and copper strips are inserted into this potato, with a wire connecting the two strips. This potato battery works as follows: 1 The zinc atoms in contact with the potato dissolve in the presence of the acid. This causes some electrons to separate from the zinc atoms. As a result of this, positively charged zinc ions, and negatively charged electrons, are produced.
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