Starting Off

Heyyo! Thanks for tuning in to my second blog post. Recently, I have been trying to learn more about electricity and properties of electrodes. A few weeks back, I made a lemon battery just to experiment creating a voltage difference without using an actual battery that we are all used to seeing. Turned out the lemon battery (with 4 lemons) was actually able to power an LED bulb- it was so exciting! Check out the picture below:

Conceptually, to create an electric circuit, the most basic thing you need is the flow of ions, or charged particles, and a path for this current to go through, the wires. This is why lemons can work as batteries. This is also hopefully why saltwater (sodium and chlorine ions) will work as a battery for my project.

So far I haven't had too many setbacks (phew!).. probably because I haven't done much yet other than research. Over the next couple of weeks, I want to get active and actually try making the saltwater circuit. I will update you in future posts as to how that goes. 

Off late, I have also been wondering how I can apply this concept of making electricity out of unusual sources to our everyday lives and anatomy&physiology. I haven't quite come up with an answer to this yet, but as you probably know, the human body is made out of all kinds of ionic solutions and it stores a LOT of energy, so this is surely something worth exploring. Perhaps in the future I could work on powering objects by using our own body itself- maybe even as a means of burning excess fat! This is something I am definitely very interested in working on beyond the scope of this class.

Check back in after 2 weeks for more! =)