Group Project: Fruit Circuit

Overview: 

Fruit is mostly acidic, which means it is low in pH. When two metals, copper and zinc, are added into the fruit and connected with a conductor, it will create a circuit. Batteries operate based on the same concept. Batteries consist of two metals, an anode and a cathode, which never touch and are separated by an acid. This creates a circuit when a wire is placed on both ends of the battery, and will create a chemical reaction which causes a flow of electrons to move through the circuit.

We used limes for our experiment. Limes are lower in pH than lemons or other citrus fruits, so they are ideal for a battery acid.  Our hypothesis was if more limes were added to the circuit, the more voltage it would generate. We predicted this because each lime acts like a battery, and the more batteries in the circuit, the more power that is generated.

Results:
Our results confirmed our hypothesis to be true. With one lime, the voltage generated was .93, with two it was 1.85 and with three it was 2.81. Essentially, with every new lime added, an extra volt was added. Unfortunately, the calculator that we were supposed to power with the limes had broken, so we couldn’t test if our lime circuit was powerful enough to light up the LCD display. Although we were disappointed that we could not see our circuit in action, we still got to see how our lime circuit was able to generate power.

Image source:
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