FRUIT BATTERY (Abstract)

By Nivedita Kripalani 22-Feb-2016

My project is called the “fruit battery” because fruits can generate electricity. I wanted to

do this project because I always wondered if electricity could be generated in things that are

different from batteries. My question asks, “What types of fruits conduct electricity?” I guessed

that if a fruit is more citric, then it will conduct more electricity than a fruit that is less citric.

The electric current is the flow of electrons through a conducting wire. The current has a unit of

measurement called amperes. An electrode is a conductor that carries an electric charge. To

conduct an electric current, you need a positive and negative electrode. An LED converts

electricity into light. With a fruit, I can create a closed circuit with a positive and a negative

electrode and generate electricity using the citric acid in the fruit.

I used four fruits and created four closed circuits using positive and negative electrodes

(zinc and copper). I connected the LED light and the multi-meter into this closed circuit and

recorded the current, and how long the LED light stayed on for each fruit. I repeated this

procedure for four fruits, two times each. Then I recorded this data in a table and presented my

results.

As my initial hypothesis stated, the fruits that are more citric generated a higher reading

on the multi-meter and enabled the LED light to stay lit up for a longer time. The acidic fruits

such as the lemon and orange generated more electricity than the apple or the pear which are less

acidic fruits. I concluded that the citric acid in the fruit is a good conductor of electricity because

of the specific characteristics of this acid.