Lemon battery

Equipment:
Orange
Lemon
Copper nail
Zinc nail
Voltmeter
Switch
Alligator clip
Knife
Light bulb


Method:

1.  Grab your lemon and roll it around for a few seconds to create more juice.
2. After that make a small cut on both ends of the lemon, it's important that the cuts are far apart as possible so nothing doesn't touch.
3. Insert copper-nail at one end of the lemon and the zinc nail at the other end.
4. You can now use the alligator clip and voltmeter!
5. Now its a battery!

Results:

Discussion:



The reaction that is happening is called Redox (reduction-oxidation). We built a circuit out of lemons (and oranges), zinc and copper-nail, Aligator clips and a voltmeter. In the circuit, the electrons were able to flow around. The electrons were flowing anti-clockwise, from the zinc to the copper because zinc is more reactive so it lets go of more electrons. Zinc releases the negative electrons to copper and zinc builds the positives. Once the electrons move from the zinc, zinc now becomes zinc 2+. The zinc 2+ now move around in the lemon juice. once zinc loses the electrons, it doesn't want the electrons back, so it flows around in the lemon. Only negative charges can be lost and postitive charges cant be lost. Citric acid dissociates (brakes down) to give a positively charged hydrogen ion. These ions are electrolytes that can conduct electricity (electricity is the movement of charge). Therefore the lemons provide current and voltage.

Evaluation:
 During the experiment, a lot of things went wrong such as the lemon nor the orange made the light glow. The highest volts we got up to was 0.7 volts.  We needed 2-3 volts for the light to glow. We don't know why it didn't work but we think that the lemon and the orange didn't have enough acidity for the electrons to build-up. Another factor is that we didn't clean off the rust very well. we could have waited for a few days for the lemon to gain more sourness to gain more electrons. Some of the electrons were lost when we cut the orange in half, some of the juice was lost therefore some electron were lost. To gain more electrons we should have waited a day or two for it ripen or to be overripe to get more juice and electrons moving.