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Is My Snack a Battery?

Submitted By:

Ayaan Gaonkar (G-1), Rishabh Dash (G-1)

School: John Sinnott Elementary School

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Background Information

In this project, we are exploring whether everyday foods can be used to create electricity and act like a battery!
We want to learn if a lemon, potato and banana can power a small digital clock, and which food works best.
This will be an interesting project using which we will investigate how food contains chemical energy that can be converted into electrical energy.

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Purpose

Through this science project, we plan to explore:

The concepts of-

Types of energy
Energy conversion
Electricity generation
What is a battery?

How foods containing chemical energy can be used to generate electrical energy when zinc nails and copper plates are placed inside it.
If the liquid in the food helps electricity flow through a complete circuit to power a clock.

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Hypothesis

We have 2 hypothesis for this experiment:

We think if we use highly acidic foods (like lemon), it will power the clock on much faster/brighter than if we use moderately or low acidic foods (like apples and bananas).
We think if we use a greater number of lemons with zinc and copper plates and connect them to each other, that will create a more powerful battery than if we use lesser number of lemons.

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Materials

Fruits/Vegetables (Lemon, Apple, Banana)
Zinc Nails
Copper Plates
A digital clock
Wires
Alligator clips as Connectors

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Procedure to build the food powered battery

We built a fruit powered battery by following these steps:

First, we used 3 lemons and inserted one copper plate and one zinc nail in each lemon.
Next, we used wires and alligator clips to connect a copper plate in one lemon to a zinc nail in the other lemon. This created a closed circuit.
Finally, we took a digital clock and connected the red wire of the clock to the red alligator clip and the black wire to the black alligator clip.
We repeated the above steps replacing the 3 lemons with 3

bananas.

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Procedure/Results of the experiment #1

To prove our hypothesis #1: If we use highly acidic foods, it will power the clock on much faster/brighter than if we use low acidic foods.

Procedure:

We used 3 lemons to create our highly acidic food battery.
We used 3 bananas to create our low acidic food battery.
We connected the clock to both the batteries.

Result:

As we expected, the lemon battery caused the clock to turn on faster and the numbers were brighter.
The battery made of bananas took a few seconds to turn the clock on because bananas are not as acidic as lemons.
Cause- Higher acidity, Effect- Power reached the clock faster.

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Results of the experiment #1

Result for hypothesis #1:

The more acidic the food we use, the faster/brighter the clock will turn on.

As seen in the image, the clock turned on instantly when we use lemons and the numbers are clearly visible. In the image with bananas, the clock did not turn on instantly.

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Procedure/Results of the experiment #2

To prove our hypothesis #2: If we use a greater number of lemons, it will generate a more electricity than if we use just 3 lemons.

Procedure:

We made one battery using 4 lemons.
We made a second battery using 3 lemons.
We connected the clock to both these batteries to see the difference in brightness.

Result:

As expected, the battery with 4 lemons showed the numbers brighter and clearer than the battery with 3 lemons.

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Results of the experiment #2

Result for hypothesis #2:

The greater number of acidic foods we use, the higher electricity it will generate.

As seen in the images, the clock using 4 lemons as its battery is generating more power (the numbers appear brighter and clearer) than the clock using 3 lemons as its battery.

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Conclusions

Through this project, we learned basic science concepts of energy and power.

We learned how to build a battery using foods available at home.

We learned how chemical energy converts to electrical energy.

We learned how to compare results, solve problems through trial and error and explore cause-and-effect relationships in a fun way.