Chemistry

It was raining on Thursday, so I couldn't go to the building site. Instead I sat down with some fascinating items I brought from Dick Smith and proceeded to try and turn a lemon into a battery. I have a low inertia motor and a small LED, both of which need on 1.5 V (a AAA battery) to function. PLease note the extreme importance of both the first year lecture notes and the Carlton Draught (VB is better).

I'm only supposed to use stuff from around the home. I have Aluminium foil and silver coins for electrodes (American quarters were slightly better than Australin 50c coins) and a lemon as a battery acid. I also tried paper dipped in water saturated with table salt. It worked, but not quite as good as the lemon

It wasn't as succesful as I'd hoped, in particular as this is part of my assessment for the Science Circus. While I got a maximum of about 1.8 volts from four battery cells in a series the potential difference fluctuated so violently I wasn't able to make the motor work or light the LED.

Next I'm going to try lemon juice and coke. I'm hoping that the lemon fibres are somehow interuppting the transfer of electrons.