- All you need is a potato, uninsulated copper wire and some nails. Buff the ends of the nails with some sandpaper so they will get maximum input from the potato. You'll stick one of the nails and the piece of copper wire about an inch into the potato. Put them close together, but make sure they don't touch. Then, touch the leads from a voltmeter to the nail and the wire. You should get a reading of about 0.5. If you get a negative number, change the leads to the other terminal.
- The steps for this project are exactly the same as with the potato. As with the potato, the voltmeter should give you a reading when you slide the copper wire and the nail into the lemon. In neither case would you get enough electricity to turn on a light bulb, but you do get some.
- The key is that you have two different metals in the potato and the lemon, and they are reacting chemically with the juices, which are the "electrolyte" in the situation. This means you have voltage when the voltmeter completes the circuit.
- Results vary, as such variables as the amount of juice in the produce can be within a fairly wide parameter. However, several experimenters reported that the lemon produced a slightly higher voltage. This may be due to the lemon's increased acidity.
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