Electricity from Potatoes

🎂 8 + years ⏱️ 30 min 📍 Anywhere ⭐ medium

Here's a really exciting experiment for you: You can generate electricity from potatoes! With just a few items, you'll see how potatoes create electricity that lights up an LED. It's almost like magic! So, gather everything you need and try it out yourself.

What you'll need

4 potatoes
4 x 5-cent coins
4 galvanized nails
5 crocodile clips with wires
LED lights

How it works

First, you need to line up your potatoes in a row. They shouldn't be too far apart so that the crocodile clips can connect them well.
Now take a 5-cent coin and insert it into the first potato. Push it in halfway so that it sits firmly in the potato. Then take a galvanized nail and insert it into the same potato, but on the opposite side of the coin.
Make sure the coin and nail do not touch each other. Repeat this step for all four potatoes: one 5-cent coin on one side and a galvanized nail on the other.
Now comes the exciting part! You connect the potatoes together to create a circuit. Use the crocodile clips to connect the coin in the first potato to the nail in the second potato.
Do this up to the fourth potato, until each coin is connected to the nail of the next potato. Now it gets really exciting! Take another crocodile clip and connect the free nail of the first potato to one leg of the LED.
Then connect the free crocodile clip of the last potato to the other leg of the LED. If everything is connected correctly, the LED should start to light up now! If the LED doesn't light up, try swapping the legs of the LED, as it works like plus and minus in a battery.
Now you have generated electricity from potatoes! The coin (made of copper) and the nail (made of zinc) react with each other to create a small electric voltage. When you connect the potatoes together, enough electricity is generated to light up the LED! How cool is that?