Last month we did an experiment on making a clock from potato batteries.
These are the things we needed:
2 Copper and Zinc plates , connecting wire, digital clock with wires , transparent tape and 2 potatoes.
This is how we did it:
We assembled a ‘connection pair’ by connecting the pair of Copper and Zinc plates through the hole on the plate. Gently we twisted the wire to secure it to the plate. We covered and secured the connection with the adhesive tape.
Next we connected the black wire from the LCD clock to one of the Zinc plates. Then we connected the red wire from the LCD clock to a piece of Copper plate. Now all the components were connected. We inserted the Copper and Zinc plates into the potatoes , taking care that the metal plates didn’t touch each other.
SETTING THE CLOCK
When all the metal plates were first inserted into the potatoes , the LED screen showed a static display of “12:00“.We pressed A [top button] once and the clock started working. We saw the 2 dots in the middle flashing .We pressed B [bottom button] twice to obtain the set month mode , we pressed A to adjust the right month. We pressed B to confirm and the display switched to the day mode . We pressed A to adjust to the right day. We pressed B to confirm and switched to set hour mode. We pressed A to adjust to the right hour. We pressed B to confirm and switched to set minute mode . We pressed A to adjust to the right minute and pressed B to confirm this. After the minute was confirmed , we pressed A once . The set time was displayed.
Our potato battery lasted for a day or so but then the clock began to slow down. The next time we do this experiment we will try other foods like lemons or oranges.
By Simon O` Mahony and Peter O ` Shea 🙂
