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>Poor people don't need small LED lights Huh? Reliable light is one of the best things to provide impoverished areas with, after clean water/food/medicine/sewa
by panchayoooot 6y ago
>Poor people don't need small LED lights
Huh? Reliable light is one of the best things to provide impoverished areas with, after clean water/food/medicine/sewage.
It's one of those things that we really take for granted, but if someone dropped you in the middle of the woods, I bet a headlamp and power source would be one of the first conveniences that you'd ask for.
Anyways, like others have pointed out, the energy comes from charge carriers moving between the metals stuck in the potato, not the potato itself. That particular misconception comes up surprisingly often, to the point that it's kind of a running joke in its own right. Portal 2 had a pretty tongue-in-cheek take on the gag.
- aaron695 6y agoYou'll find in practice they can afford a cheap led light and battery what they need is a charger for their phone (And clean water/micro-nutrients/medicine/sewage~=clean water) And wow, potato batteries are a scam. Fool I am. So boiling them won't release more energy to electricity... I guess... I'll need to sit down and work it out. I don't get why a cheaper fluid that doesn't rot won't work ok then. Why is there no web page explaining this Sci Fair scam. Why a potato over salty water? Or a steak. Or a lump of dirt. What's the relationship between a potato having energy and the fact it's used in potato batteries.
- panchayoooot 6y agoOh, it's not a science fair scam - it's a great way for kids to learn about electricity! Compare it to sticking similar nails in a few other objects, and you've got yourself a poster. But it's also not as simple as growing a field of lumpy batteries.