Got some lemons? Let's make a lemon battery! With just a few household items, you can generate electricity and light an LED. Join in this hands-on activity to learn about electricity. It is great for all ages and cheap to build. You need 3x lemons, copper pennies, galvanized nails, copper wire, and an LED to light up.
FAQ, Tips & Issues building the Lemon Battery:
Top reasons why it doesn't light up an LED:
1) Your coins really should be made of 100% copper, meaning they should be minted before 1982. Coins minted after 1982 are copper plated zinc (2.5% copper, 97.5% zinc). I have had success with these current coins, however very unreliable success.
2) The copper pennies should be clean. Use steel wool or a brillo pad, or the rough side of a sponge and some vinegar to clean them.
ALTERNATIVELY: You can just use a good amount of copper wire inside the lemon instead of the copper pennies, but if you aren't using enough copper wire, your lemon battery won't generate enough current.
3) Your LED legs are facing the wrong direction.
4) Inside the lemon the copper pennies and zinc nails are touching.
5) The connection from copper wire to zinc nails isn't good.
How do LEDs & Batteries Work?
How does electricity even do stuff? How do all the LEDs around us work? How do Batteries work? We know it powers everything around us, but what are the mechanics behind it doing something like- producing light? In this episode, we explore how Lemon Batteries produce electricity, and then how we can use that electricity with an LED to generate light! Let's dive into some of the fundamentals around electricity, and learn something fascinating today!
Table of Contents:
0:22 Exploring the Lemon Battery
1:23 Watching a the chemical reaction
1:57 What's the copper wire for?
3:00 What's the speed of an electron? What about electricity?
4:15 How does an LED create light?
8:38 Outro
