Surprised that your potato can be a battery? Well, don’t be. The omnipresent potato, which is also called the king of vegetables, is an electrochemical cell. This simply means that it can produce electricity using the chemicals found in it. Let’s make a potato battery to see for ourselves.
Materials Required
You will need the following materials to make a potato battery. So collect them before proceeding further.
- 2 big potatoes, washed thoroughly to remove all traces of dirt
- 3 good quality copper wires – approx. 20 cm long
- 2 galvanized nails
- 2 copper nails
- 6 alligator clips
- 1 wall clock or LED clock that uses 1 button or pencil type battery
Procedure
- Attach one alligator clip to each end of the copper wire.
- Remove the battery of the clock. Make a note of the + and – poles of the battery.
- Insert galvanized nail into each potato (A and C in Figure 1 below).
- Again insert copper nail to the opposite side of each potato (B and D in Figure 1).
Figure 1: Nails Inserted in the Potatoes
5.Ensure that the nails do not touch each other inside or outside the potato.
6.Connect terminals A and D with one wire.
7. Connect terminal B to the + and C to the – poles of the battery as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Potato Battery Wire Connections
How it Works
As mentioned earlier, potato battery is an electrochemical cell, where chemical energy is converted to electric energy. Here is what happens in our potato setup. The zinc ions of the galvanized nails react with the copper ions of the nails in the potatoes as medium. As the nails are not touching each other, the electrons have to move through the copper wire to react. This movement of electrons produces electricity that runs over the circuit and makes the clock work.
So next time you see potatoes, don’t think of them only as edible ingredients but as potential batteries. Who knows, when we run out of other energy resources in the future, as the environmentalists keep warning, the good old potatoes can come to our rescue.
Here is a link to a video where you can see how the potato batteries are made:
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