Principles and how to make lemon battery

Only with the simple principle that you can generate electricity from lemons.

Power supplies

Electricity that can be sold to the household by the state is alternating current. We also use electricity in the form of DC power sources such as batteries and batteries. Batteries are used as generators for cars and motorcycles, and batteries are compact devices that are very close to the ones we have in watches, TV controls, etc.

But why do we always think about buying from the store when we mention batteries? Can we create our own small DC power source for some daily activities? For example, a night light . We can create electricity similar to batteries in a simple and safe way.

The basic components of a battery

To learn about the phenomenon of electric kinetic energy (i.e. voltage) and the current generated by a lemon, we need some simple materials, as shown in the picture.

Materials used to make lemon batteries.

First plug 2 pieces of wire / piece of metal into the lemon and remember not to touch them. To verify if there is a potential difference between the two metals, connect the two wires to a multi-function electric meter.

First plug 2 pieces of metal wire / piece into the lemon.

What if the two metal wires used were the same (two pieces of copper or two pieces of zinc, two screws)? There will be no voltage appears. Now try with a copper wire and a screw or a copper wire with a paper clip. Is the clock only about 0.8 - 0.9V? So there was a potential difference between the two metals.

If you squeeze lemon juice in a cup and put two different metal wires in it, what happens?

Now, squeeze the juice of lemon juice into a cup, then dip into the cup two metal wires (let them touch the lemon juice and the two metals touch each other). Connect these two metals to the electricity meter again. You may realize that if the two metals are different then continue to create kinetic energy between the two metals.

Explain

Because lemons contain citric acid (an organic acid) , which is considered an electrolyte solution. Furthermore, when a metal is attached to a lemon, either metal or both have a chemical reaction between the acid and the metal. This can cause the metal wires to be charged (excess electrons), resulting in one wire being more negative than the other. When connecting two poles by a wire, the current is formed by the movement of the negative charge from the cathode to the anode

When two different metal rods (eg copper and iron) are immersed in an electrolyte solution (containing ions), and at the same time a reaction occurs at the iron bar, the voltage may appear.

So we can conclude, that to have a battery (electrochemical battery) requires 2 components is a solution of electrolytes and two other intrinsic metals. Based on this, we infer that acid solutions can be replaced with table salt solutions, although the resulting voltage may be smaller.

Can the electricity generated from these lemons be used?

The answer is yes . By connecting the batteries (one battery's cathode to the other's positive pole) or parallel (the cathode connected together, the anode connected to each other) we can create a power source strong enough to make light up a small LED light bulb.