perhaps even charge your cell phone that way.
Don't believe me? Take a look at A Potato Battery Can Light Up a Room For Over a Month from Smithsonian.com
How it works -
What the potato does is simply help conduct electricity by acting as what’s called a salt-bridge between the the two metals, allowing the electron current to move freely across the wire to create electricity. Numerous fruits rich in electrolytes like bananas and strawberries can also form this chemical reaction. They’re basically nature’s version of battery acid
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The results from some research at Hebrew University -
At around one-tenth the cost of a typical AA battery, a potato could supply power for cell phone and other personal electronics in poor, underdeveloped and remote regions without access to a power grid.
Of course that presumes that the potatoes are not necessary for food. Still, imagine this as a source of electricity while campaign, or if your car breaks down and you are stranded and don't want to run down your cell phone battery.
As the article notes,
...besides being rich in phosphoric acid, spuds are ideal in that they’re composed of sturdy starch tissue, can be stored for months and won’t attract insects the way, say strawberries, would. Additionally, boiling the potato breaks down the resistance inherent in the dense flesh so that electrons can flow more freely, which significantly bumps up the overall electrical output. Cutting the potato up into four or five pieces, they researchers found, made it even more efficient.
So one can have some boiled potato slices and be good to go, right?
The potato battery kit, which includes two metal electrodes and alligator clips, is easy to assemble and, some parts, such as the zinc cathode, can be inexpensively replaced. The finished device Rabinowitch came up with is designed so that a new boiled potato slice can be inserted in between the electrodes after the potato runs out of juice. Alligator clips that transport the current carrying wires are attached to the electrodes and the negative and positive input points of the light bulb. Compared to kerosene lamps used in many developing parts of the world, the system can provide equivalent lighting at one-sixth the cost; it’s estimated to be somewhere around $9 per kilowatt hour and a D cell battery, for another point of comparison, can run as much as $84 per kilowatt hour.
The article contains a video and links to various things.
Got it the story in an email and it caught my attention.
We have an ice storm possible tonight around DC. In such circumstances we sometimes lose power, as we also did for several days after the derecho. Since I have a gas stove and matches, I can always boil potatoes.
I'm thinking of getting a kit and always having a bag of potatoes in the basement just in case - assuming that I can get transformers at the proper voltage.
Anyhow, I thought it was a neat idea worth sharing.
Now excuse me while I go make some french fries. -:)