A Produce Powered World by Gracyn Thompson 2022

The question being researched Procedures

for this paper is; What fruit or vegetable For this experiment, the same
provides the largest amount of electric procedure is repeated for each
energy in volts?In a world where energy is fruit/vegetable. First, copper
a constant topic of conversation whether and zinc electrodes, one of
that be discussions on oil, gas, solar power, each, are inserted on opposite
or wind energy - what if the best source is ends of the produce. The zinc
actually the food we grow and eat on a and copper metals will react
with the juices in the fruit or
daily basis? Every day in school cafeterias
vegetable to create a battery
across the US there are trash cans full of
(Carpenter, 2017). Then, the
uneaten fruit and vegetables - what if all of
leads from the multimeter are
that discarded produce could be turned
attached to the electrodes on
into electricity? Through this experiment, one end and the device on the
the question about which produce is the other. To make sure the
best source of energy will be answered and multimeter is measuring Results Conclusion
the hypothesis is that citrus fruit will voltage, turn the middle knob Through this experiment, it was found that
provide the largest amount of electric to the “ṽ” symbol. Plug the While none of these fruits and vegetables have more than Honeycrisp apples have a higher voltage than
1 volt, the data shows that they all hold more than zero. the predicted citrus(lemon/lime), even if only by
energy. black lead into the COM jack
0.02 volts. If a local elementary school includes
and the red lead into the VΩ It’s interesting that the fruits with the highest voltage
apples in the breakfasts that around 400
Materials Variables jack(note: when the experiment was the apple(1 volt). It was assumed that because students get each morning and pretty much
-Klein Tools is finished, unplug the leads in lemons and limes have lower Ph’s(around 2.0 compared every single one goes in a trash can, that’s
Multimeter(with Independent: Fruit reverse- red, then black). to an apple’s 3.0), therefore are more acidic, they would nearly 2,000 perfectly good apples being thrown
leads/wires) away every week. If each apple contains around
-Zinc electrodes
or Vegetable being Connect the black lead to the be more electrically charged. It was also interesting to see
used the potatoes were second to lowest on the voltage scale. 1 volt of electricity, just one elementary school’s
-Copper electrodes zinc electrode, then the red one
-Strawberry apples would produce 2,000 volts. Research
to the copper. Read the If you were to do a basic search on food batteries, you
-Banana Dependent: Voltage shows that an average household takes around
measurements on the display. would probably come up with the stereotypical, “Connect 220-240 volts to power it (Burgasser). This
-Pineapple from the
-Apple Repeat the entire procedure a lightbulb and a potato and it works!” experiment. This means that those breakfast apples could
-Potato
fruit/vegetable
with each fruit and/or may lead people to believe that potatoes could make good possibly power almost 10 homes. So, while
-Tomato people around the world argue about energy
vegetable used in the batteries, but if you wanted that to be true, you would
-Lemon Control: Zinc and
-Lime experiment. need a lot of potatoes. conservation, maybe we don’t even need to look
copper electrodes further than cafeteria trash cans.
-Carrot