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Potato(Solanum tuberosum) PoweredBattery

Submitted by: Eduard Joseph MilitanteJhules Daniel Bello

Submitted to: Mrs. Evelyn Calibo

Chapter I – The Problem and its Settings

Introduction

Energy, as we all know, cannot be created nor destroyed. It is an element that is

so essential in life that it is needed as we continuously live our lives. Due to the on-

going evolution of man’s mind and imagination, we advance level by level in using

different materials around us to improvise a better way to live.

With a fruit, a Miliameter, a copper and zinc strip, and alligator clips, we can

create an alternative for batteries since chemicals and wastes used to create these are

very harmful to the society’s health and to the environment. The researchers would

hope that this research would be a feasible and reliable topic to help reduce pollution

and usage of daily foods to be boosted.

Statement of the Problem

The purpose of this study is to determine the electric current passing through the

potato and to validate whether it is ideal for an electric source.

Can the researchers prove this experiment as a possible source for electricity?

Is the current of the potato safe for electric gadgets?

How long will the current of the potato last in powering a simple gadget?

Hypothesis

The researchers believe that:

If more potatoes will be used to power up an electronic device, then the power

of the gadget will last longer.

If the potato would be able to power up a small device, then it should power up

a larger device for a smaller certain amount of time.

Objectives

The main purpose of this experiment is to design a power source wherein people

would be able to access electricity despite the absence of a battery. With that the

researchers will:

Create a power source that would be able to provide an environmental friendly

energy.

Provide alternative use for potato such as a battery

Significance of the Study

The purpose of this study is to provide information and to prove to the society

that there are more options for powering up devices that would require you to do a

little science experiment at your home. This study is also for the purpose of backing up

proofs and theories of using vegetables and fruits as sources of energy. It will provide

farmers better economics structures that would help them in their livelihood as well as

in helping circulate products in the industry.

Scope & Delimitation

This research mainly covers on testing & powering up a simple electronic gadget

using the current present in a potato. The probability of having a weak spot in this

research is slim since this research was already backed up by numerous scientists and

experimenters around the world. The researchers would use materials such as electrical

related materials. With all that said and done, they would require at the most 2 weeks

to finalize and fix common errors present in the experiment.

Limitations of the Study

Energy cannot be created nor destroyed. That’s why energy from the potato is

transferred directly to the mini device. Since the energy of the potato may be small,

it may be incapable of fully powering the device and it can only power it up for a

limited time.

Definition of Terms

1. Tuber – type of modified plant that are enlarged to store nutrients

2. Sustainable Energy – sustainable provision of energy that meets the needs of the

present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their

needs.

3. Electric Charge – physical property of matter than causes it to experience a force

when near other electrical charge matter.

4. Electrolyte – a liquid or gel that contains ions and can be decomposed by

electrolysis

5. Electrolysis – method of using a direct electric current to drive an otherwise non-

spontaneous chemical reaction.

6. Voltage - electrical potential difference or electric tension (denoted ∆V and

measured in units of electric potential

7. Acid – corrodes a metallic material or object. Has a pH level of more than 8.

8. Maize – a type of vegetable also known as a corn

9. Germplasm - collection of genetic resources for an organism. For plants, the

germplasm may be stored as a seed collection or, for trees, in a nursery.

10. Cultivar - plant or grouping of plants selected for desirable characteristics that

can be maintained by propagation

Chapter II – Related Literature and Studies

This chapter covers the ideal information related to the study of Potato Powered

Battery.

Why Does Citrus Fruits Produce Electricity?

Complete Circuit

In order to generate electricity, there must be a power source and a complete circuit. When using a citrus fruit to create electricity, these rules still apply. In a simple experiment using a citrus fruit, the components of the circuit include: a lemon or other fruit, wire, two different metal elements and a small light bulb. The lemon in this circuit serves as the battery and power source.Two metals often used in this demonstration are zinc and copper. The acidic juice of the lemon dissolves small amounts of the two metals and their electrons react with each other. The negatively charged ions travel through the wires, creating an electrical current. (Electricity is the movement of electrons.) This demonstration is a closed circuit, which allows electrons to flow from the power source and back again, with no breaks.

Battery Properties

At first glance, it appears this circuit lacks the crucial component of a battery or power source. The lemon, with the zinc and copper, becomes a battery. A battery is composed of two metals and an electrolyte. An electrolyte is a conductive liquid; here, the lemon juice performs this function. A chemical reaction takes place between the metals within the citrus fruit. This creates voltage, which pushes the electrons through the circuit.

A common misunderstanding is that citrus fruits create electricity. What happens is the electrolyte (the citrus juice) combined with the zinc and the copper form a battery, which in turn completes an electrical circuit.

Multi-Cell Battery

Citrus fruits like oranges and lemons are excellent conductors. They don't produce much energy on their own, but if you utilize a few of them in a series within the circuit, you can

produce enough electricity to power a light bulb. This creates a multi-cell battery, which makes the citrus fruit electricity more powerful and practical.

Variations

Citrus fruits are not the only sources of electrolytes. Other juicy fruits, like apples, can be used. Potatoes are good conductors, too. Vinegar is also a viable conductor. Many small items can be powered using an electrical circuit with citrus fruits, such as penlight bulbs. LEDs can be powered with citrus fruits; they use less electricity than light bulbs. Calculators are a useful tool that can be powered by this method, too.

(Griffis, Sunny. Why Do Citrus Fruits Produce Electricity? .Retrieved September 13, 2012, from http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5167602_do-citrus-fruits-produce-electricity.html)

How to Light Up a Light Bulb With Citrus FruitYou can use citrus fruit to light up a light bulb by making a fruit battery. Fruit batteries are an ideal science fair project for elementary and middle school students. They're fun, safe and inexpensive.

Here's the simple version of how fruit batteries work. When you put two unlike metals in a liquid, they generate electricity. The metals are called the electrodes. The liquid is called the electrolyte. How much electricity is

generated depends on how different the metals are on the atomic level. Copper, for instance, has 29 electrons in each of its atoms. Zinc has 30. Gold has a whopping 79. A lemon or grapefruit works great as a self-contained package of fluid, and the acidity of the juice conducts electricity better than an alkaline or neutral liquid. Attach the light bulb's wires to the electrodes, and you have a fun demonstration of how electricity works.

Things You'll Need Large lemon Empty egg Carton 2-inch Copper Nail 2-inch galvanized nail 6-volt miniature lamp with leads Wire Stripper 2 Alligator Clips Micro Voltmeter

Instructions

o 1 Roll the lemon between your palm and the kitchen counter-top until you feel it soften. Don't break the skin or cut it. Rolling the lemon will release the juice inside the peel, and help the electricity flow between the electrodes.

o 2 Place the rolled lemon in a compartment in the egg carton to keep it from rolling away.

o 3 Push the nails half-way into the fruit about 2 inches apart. Don't let them touch, and don't push them in so far that they pierce the skin on the opposite side.

o 4 Check the leads on the bulb. If the wire is insulated to the end of each lead, strip off 1 inch of insulation with the wire stripper.

o 5 Wrap one end of the bare wire lead around the copper nail; wrap the other around the galvanized nail.

o 6 Apply the alligator clips to the wrapped wires to keep them in place around the nails.

Tips & Warnings

This principle is why a little piece of foil can make a filling in your tooth hurt. Your saliva helps the aluminum in the foil and the metal in your filling create an electrical charge. You can attach a micro voltmeter to your lemon battery and track the voltage. You can experiment with different kinds of fruit and vegetables to see which produce the most electricity. Try using different kinds of nails or other metal objects. Supplies for this project can be purchased at electrical supply and home improvement stores. Also consider shopping at military surplus store.

(Cable, Hilary. How to Light Up a Light Bulb with Citrus Fruit. Retrieved September 17, 2012)

Fruit Battery Experiment

Ever heard of a fruit battery? Who knew we could make our own batteries? Batteries are the most common source of electricity especially for smaller gadgets and devices that need electric power to work. It comes in different forms, in varying voltages; again depending upon the power requirement of the gadget or device we will be using them for.

Batteries store chemical energy and transform this energy into electricity. This is how batteries make gadgets and electronic devices work, like mobile phones, MP3 players, flashlights, and a whole lot more.

There are two main types of batteries based on the type of electrolyte it uses. There is what we call the wet cell, which makes use of liquid electrolytes in the form of a solution, and there is also what we call dry cell, which makes use of electrolytes in the form of paste. There are many more types of batteries available in the market now, like carbon-zinc cell, alkaline cell, nickel-cadmium cell, Edison cell and mercury cell.

In this simple experiment, we will be creating our own battery with the use of citrus fruits, with a power that is strong enough to make a small bulb light up. Later on, we will discuss how citrus fruits work as batteries.

MATERIALS

To make our fruit battery work, we have to secure the following materials:

citrus fruits such as lemons, limes, oranges, etc copper nail (recommended size in length is 2 inches or longer)

small light bulb (preferable coloured or opaque with a 2-inch lead with enough wire to connect it to the nails)

electrical tape

zinc nail or galvanized nail (also 2 inches or longer)

micro ammeter (optional)

PROCEDURE

The estimate experiment time for this activity is about five to ten minutes. It does not take long to create your fruit battery!

Now, the first step is to take your citrus fruit of choice, and squeeze it on all sides with your hands without breaking the skin. Your aim is to soften the citrus fruit enough to extract its juices. Next step is to puncture and insert the nails into the fruit, about 2 inches away from each other, in such a way that the two ends of it stops at the centre of the fruit without touching each other. Insert each nail slowly so that it does not go through the fruit completely.

After doing this, take your bulb and peel off its plastic insulation exposing the wire underneath. Wrap the exposed wires around the head of the 2 nails. Use the electrical tape to secure each end of the wire on the nails. Soon as you attach the wires on both the copper nail and the galvanized nail, your coloured bulb will light up!

DISCUSSION

Citrus fruits have an acidic content, and the more acidic it is, the better it is for conducting electricity. This is the reason why even though the nails were not touching each other, your fruit battery still worked! The fruit contains positively charged ions. When you inserted the galvanized or zinc nail into the fruit, the negatively charged ions or the electrons started to move from the fruit to the zinc nail thus leaving the protons in the fruit. This transfer of electrons generates electricity as soon as you attach the wires to the nail, and the bulb lights up! Amazing huh

(Shuttleworth, Martyn. Fruit Battery Experiment.Retrieved September 19, 2012 from http://www.experiment-resources.com/fruit-battery-experiment.html)

Where there’s a potato, there could be light

In a discovery with far-reaching implications for the developing world, Israeli researchers have created organic ‘potato batteries’ that can power lights, computers and more.

Cheap, and widely available in most countries of the world all year round, Potatoes make an ideal source of power.

Potatoes offer more than just a valuable source of nutrition, now they can also power your lights and computers, say Israeli researchers.

The scientists from Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ) have discovered that potatoes can be used as organic batteries, providing a cheap, immediate and easy to use source of green power to parts of the world that currently lack electrical infrastructure.

It’s a development that could improve the quality of life of 32 percent of the developing non-OECD populations – some 1.8 billion people.

The new organic electric battery can provide the power source to meet significant, low-power needs such as lighting, telecommunication, and information transfer.

“A person with two left hands could do it,” Prof. Haim D. Rabinowitch of the university’s Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment tells ISRAEL21c. “It’s like making a sandwich of two metal sheets and a piece of cooked potato in between.”

Humble potato is the top choice

Rabinowitch, research student Alex Golberg from the university’s School of Computer Science and Engineering, together with Prof. Boris Rubinsky at the University of California at Berkeley, have been studying the electrolytic process in living matter for use in various applications, including the generation of electric energy for self-powered implanted medical electronic devices.

The professor explains that all organic tissue can serve in the construction of such a cell and generate electricity. “It is possible to replace the potato with liver tissue (for example) or any other tissue in our body for self-powered implanted medical electronic devices. Think of a pacemaker that gets its power by contact with the heart tissue or muscles. Such a pacemaker does not require a battery and never stops – as long as the tissue is there.”

Practically all organic matter can be used to generate electrical current through electrolysis, but some produce electricity more efficiently than others do. The humble potato was selected for the study because it is widely available almost all year-round, is grown in 130 countries over a wide range of climates (in 2007 alone 325 million tons of potatoes were produced), it isn’t messy, stores well for months and is cheap to buy.

In their research, the scientists found a new way to construct an efficient battery using zinc and copper electrodes and a slice of potato. They also discovered that the simple action of boiling a potato prior to use in electrolysis increases electric power up to 10 fold over an untreated potato, and enables the battery to work for days, and even weeks.

Israel’s potato battery is freely available to the developing world.

Initially, the researchers believed that the energy stored in the potato tuber (which is 15 to 22% starch) was the main source of power, but they then saw that output was low. Hypothesizing that the resistance of the tissue was reducing the output efficiency, they applied a technique called irreversible electroporation which damages membranes but not a cells’ other components or molecules.

Cooking adds power

“It worked like magic,” Rabinowitch reports. “Such a device is costly and is not readily available, especially in developing countries, and thus we looked for a simple, cheap, universally-available technology to achieve that goal: Cooking was the answer.”

The scientific basis of the finding is related to the reduction in the internal salt bridge resistance of the potato battery, which is exactly how engineers are trying to optimize the performance of conventional batteries. The ability to produce and utilize low power electricity was demonstrated by LEDs powered by treated potato batteries.

Cost analyses showed that the treated potato battery generates energy which is five to 50 fold cheaper than commercially available 1.5 Volt D cells and Energizer E91 cells, respectively. The clean light powered by this green battery is also at least six times more economical than the kerosene lamps often used in the developing world.

Yissum Research Development Company, the technology transfer arm of Hebrew University, has decided to give the invention away free of charge in an effort to help the 1.8 billion people in the developing world not connected to electricity.

Giving to the developing world

Rabinowitch expects that charity funds will take the initiative and start providing economically disadvantaged people with the two sheets of metal and a short piece of electric wire, “so that they can make their own ‘potato sandwiches.’”

“The ability to provide electrical power with such simple and natural means could benefit millions of people in the developing world, literally bringing light and telecommunication to their lives in areas currently lacking electrical infrastructure,” says Yaacov Michlin, CEO of Yissum.

The research findings were published in the June issue of the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy and were also featured in the Research Highlights section of Nature.

Interest in the new potato battery is growing. Rabinowitch recently received a letter from an entrepreneur in India interested in community building and environmental solutions. He is hoping to work with the Israeli team to mainstream the concept by creating kits for Indian schoolchildren and their families.

(Hoffman. Gilah K. (2010, September 20).Where there’s potato, there could be light. Retrieved from http://israel21c.org/environment/where-theres-a-potato-there-could-be-light/)

Conclusion

The researchers concluded that the topic chosen was a great stock hold of knowledge that would help the community in understanding significant uses for other materials around them in their daily life. They also concluded that even though the related literature were not as exact as it should be to the topic, it provided evidences and recommendations of a potato being able to conduct electric currents and circulate it towards a simple device such as a calculator.

Chapter III – Methodology

Introduction

The researchers used the experimental method to work on proving potato as a viable source of energy. Its purpose is to discuss “could it be”.

The data gathered were analysed and interpreted to determine if there really is a probability that you can power up a small electronic gadget using a potato.

We required and used ourselves, the researchers, who are willing to conduct the experiment happily and willing and is capable of observing electrical phenomenon and identifying basic current parameters and such.

Materials

The researchers, in order to conduct the study, will need the following materials to make such experiment:

o Potato – main source of energy/current

o Pennies – conductor of the current from the power source

o Zinc Plated Nails – gate of the pathway of the currents so that the current would transfer to the gadget

o Copper Wire – pathway of the current

o Incandescent Light Bulbs – receiver of the current

Procedures

1. Cut the potato in half, then cut a small slit into each half, large enough to slide a penny inside.

2. Wrap some copper wire around each penny a few times. Use a different piece of wire for each penny.

3. Stick the pennies in the slits you cut into the potato halves.

4. Wrap some of the third copper wire around one of the zinc-plated nails and stick the nail into one of the potato halves.

5. Take the wire connected to the penny in the half of potato with the nail and wrap some of it around the second nail. Stick that second nail into the other potato half.

6. When you connect the two loose ends of the copper wires to the light bulb or LED it will light up

Design

The independent variables are the size of the potato used and the amount of voltage produced of the experiment.

Checklist/Observations

Chapter IV – Presentation, Analysis and Interpretation of Data

Usage of Potato as a battery source

Observed Activity: _______________________ Date: _______

Directions: Please fill up the form along with the appropriate and related answers.

Observations:

Did you enjoy the experiment? Yes No

Did the experiment thought Yes No

you a lesson or two?

Comments:

Observer’s Signature

A. Textual Presentation of Data

The research is bounded by representation of data. As of the results from the researcher’s observation, these are the following:

i. The potato powers up the deviceii. The method is safe to do

iii. The materials are easy to acquire

All of these data came from the experiment done by the researchers.

B. Tabular Presentation of Data