DIY: Charge an iPod with fruits and veggies

It’s true. It’s been done and the science all adds up. We finally have an alternative source of electricity – raw enough (hyuk!) to charge your iPod at 5 volts. There is a DIY tutorial that explains the science and the procedure behind it.

When you put two different metals – say, copper and zinc – in an acidic medium such as a fruit or vegetable and connect them up on the outside, they go bananas (to stick to fruit terms) and start trading ions and electrons between each other as fast as they can.

The copper acts as a positive terminal and the zinc as the negative one – just like a car battery, which uses neither fruit nor onion, but sulphuric acid.

It is the different chemical reactions of the acid on each metal that causes an electrical charge to flow between these two terminals.

In the author’s experiments, one lemon plugged into the solution gives you about half a volt while 8 onions give you five volts. Interesting. The charge doesn’t last too long and you might be burning through onions rather quickly.