Emily Jones Lemon Battery

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For this experiment, the task at hand is to make enough energy to heat a hot plate that will boil water in ten minutes or less. One very simple way that is possible is constructing a lemon battery. To make the battery, the materials that are needed are lemons, copper wire or a penny, steel wire such as a paper clip, sandpaper, and wire. Other fruits and vegetables such as limes, grapefruits, tomatoes, oranges, and potatoes are good substitutes because they all have acid or electrolytes (can conduct electricity) in them, but lemons have the most acid of them all and are therefore the best source of energy for this experiment. The first step in making this battery is to roll the lemons and get the juices flowing. The next step involves the copper wires if you are not using the penny. Strip about two inches of instillation off the copper wire. Take the paper clip and straighten it out and cut it so it is also about two inches and use the sandpaper, if needed, to smooth the ends of both wires. Then push the two wires into the lemon as close as possible without letting them touch. Wrap the wire around the tops of the copper wire and paperclip. Using two lemons will definitely not have enough energy to heat a hot plate. The experiment above, only using two lemons, can light a small LED light or a digital watch. The lemon battery using two lemons can generate 1.5 volts, but the current is very low, about a milliamp of current. To heat the hot plate, twelve lemons are needed (six pairs of lemons multiplied by 1.5 equals nine, the equivalent to the amount of volts needed to generate the hot plate). The two circuits that could be used in connecting all the lemons together are series and parallel. A series circuit involves two resistors which are next to each other vertically (see diagram 2). In this circuit, the current stays the same, but the voltage divides when it

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