ADVERTISEMENT
Most people's mental images of potatoes include three main dishes: french fries, cheesy scalloped potatoes, and mashed potatoes with gravy. Would you ever consider potatoes as a source of energy for your house, though? A group of researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have been playing around with "potato power" for a while now, hoping to find a way to provide energy to those in remote areas who don't have access to traditional power sources.
photo by Shutterstock
Reporter Haim Rabinowitch claims that one potato can power an entire room's worth of LED lights for forty days. One way to make a potato work as a battery alternative is to connect it to some cheap metal plates, wiring, and LED lights. The BBC explains that in order to create a battery from organic materials, one needs just two metals: zinc for the negative electrode (the anode) and copper for the positive electrode (the cathode). Because of the movement of electrons from one substance to another, energy is produced when the acid inside the potato reacts with the zinc and copper.
ADVERTISEMENT
