Glowing potatoes: an awesome experiment you can conduct along with your children
The study of electricity can be very exciting if you turn it into an experiment. Using a simple potato, some coins, and a couple of wires, you can make a small power plant that will have enough capacity to light a bulb.
We tested it: this potato magic really works outside of Hogwarts!
You’ll need:
- 2 potatoes
- 4 copper pennies
- 4 zinc washers
- Wires (preferably with clips)
- a light-emitting diode (LED)
1. For this experiment, you can either use 2 potatoes or take just 1 and cut it in half.
2. Stick 1 coin and 1 washer into each potato.
3. Use a wire to connect a copper coin from one potato to a zinc washer from the other. Use clips if the wires have them. If not, wrap the bare part of the wire around the metal.
4. The LED has 2 wires — anode and cathode. Attach 1 wire to each of them.
5. Connect the free ends of the wires with the free coin and washer.
6. Let there be light!
If you want to increase the brightness, simply add potatoes. The main thing is to connect the potato chain in the correct order: a coin from one potato must be connected with a washer from the next, and so on, in a circle. A long potato chain can even light an LED bulb.
How it works
Potato juice contains salts and acids, which are natural electrolytes. When you stick the coins and washers into the potatoes, tension arises between them. If you connect a multimeter to the potatoes instead of an LED, you can see that one potato produces about 0.9 volts.
To make a single LED work, you need a current of about 1.7-2 volts, or 2-3 potatoes.
0 Comments