Lemon organic batteries 0.6Volts per lemon

[icardona]

Hello there:

I'm doing a science project for my son about organic batteries. We are using lemons in order to produce electric current. This is an investigation project for 5th grade. First as part of the investigation we need to find what fruit produce more quantity of electricity, lemon, orange and pineapple. At the moment we found lemon is producing 0.6V.

If we put 3 lemons connected in series, we got approx 1.8V, and we are thinking to demostrate we can use the lemon's electricity to connect an electronic device like a led or a computer fan, but the point is I beleive we don't have the enough current to do that.

I was thinking to conect the 0.6 volts to a transistor using as a switch in a circuit but I'm not sure if we can use the 0.6 to close a electronic circuit.

Any suggestion
?

Regards,

Ismael

 

[Raven Luni]

Rule for connecting batteries:
series = more voltage, same current
parallel = more current, same voltage.

So if you wanted 3x the voltage AND 3x the current you would need 9 lemons (3 parallel sets of 3 in series)

 

[icardona]

Thanks for the hint Raven. I will do it.

 

[KJ6EAD]

The other factors that will affect the performance of your chemical cells are electrode material, electrode surface area and distance between electrodes.

 

[Raven Luni]

You could also squeeze all the juice out of the lemons and put it in as many containers as you want