Tech Trix

Vegetables, aside from being tasty and health-abiding also have electrolyte properties.  What does this mean?  It's got more than juice you drink, it also has juice your electronics thirst for, electricity.

Some of you may remember making potato batteries in school, although we only used them to light a flashlight bulb, comprising certain vegetables and metals in larger quantities can generate enough "juice" to power some of our everyday devices...like your iPod.

How?  By the magic of physics.

Zinc and oxidation bring about a wonderful result when properly combined, electricity.  That means you can take zinc, stuff it into a vegetable (potato, apple, etc) and make some juice without a squeeze.  Wrap some copper into the mix and guess what, you have a completed electrical circuit, just apply some wiring to attach the circuit to a device and voila!...power.

Theodore Gray decided to use apples when putting vegetable power to the test.  He corded the apple into rods which he then sliced into disks.  He placed pennies (zinc...and copper!) between the slices making penny-apply power sandwiches.  After comprising 6 "batteries" with 20-25 cells (penny-apple sandwiches) Gray wired them to an iPod cable giving the device enough power, for 1 second of operation.

Although vegetables can't hold a candle against chemically manufactured batteries, in rough times or post-apocalyptic Earth, it may keep your iPod running, imagine if Hurley from Lost knew of this, he'd still be listening to his CD player on that beach.