HOW TO - Make a homemade battery using fermented grass

Here's how to make a homemade battery using fermented grass cut from your lawn, thanks Franco - Link.
Posted by Phillip Torrone |
Jan 2, 2008 01:00 AM
DIY Projects, Green |
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Comments
Oldest comments listed first.
| Posted by: Daniel Rutter on January 2, 2008 at 2:11 AM |
The fermented grass is just the electrolyte in this battery, which is a couple of ordinary copper/zinc cells. Any similarly conductive liquid - like water with a bit of salt in it - would do the same job.
Don't get me wrong - I'm all for someone who decided to ferment some grass and only after doing so moved on to figuring out what it might be good for.
But he does not appear to have made very much of a breakthrough in the burgeoning field of improvised electrochemistry.
| Posted by: CHRIS on January 2, 2008 at 7:36 AM |
That battery may have worked better if he used an
older penny new penny's are made of zinc. Ones made
before 1984-85 where all copper.
| Posted by: robot/human on January 2, 2008 at 9:46 AM |
The older penny idea wouldn't really make a difference. The older pennies were solid copper, but the surface area is the only part that matters, so it really shouldn't matter if the penny is solid copper or only zinc with a copper coating, like they are today.
| Posted by: bitrex on January 2, 2008 at 9:56 AM |
1.87 volts - but probably an output impedance of 10 million ohms :(
| Posted by: Anon on January 2, 2008 at 2:55 PM |
Maybe my basic electronics are wrong but if he connected those "cells" in parallel couldn't he have squeezed more amps out of it (in exchange for halving the voltage difference). Might not get much use from .8 volts though I suppose.
| Posted by: tachikomatic on January 2, 2008 at 5:09 PM |
Well, .8 volts with a few hundred amps available, and you could have a grass powered stick welder! So, a couple dozen tractor trailers worth of these should do the trick
| Posted by: Tachikomatic on January 2, 2008 at 5:14 PM |
Addendum to previous post:
Assuming the cells are wired in parallel.
| Posted by: rob on January 3, 2008 at 12:28 PM |
If you pronounce natural logarithm ln(x) as "lawn x"(I don't know, do americans say that?) , then the nernst equation becomes hilarious. I think that's the point of this.
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