{"id":1643,"date":"2011-04-17T19:59:47","date_gmt":"2011-04-17T19:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1643"},"modified":"2012-02-19T22:51:25","modified_gmt":"2012-02-19T22:51:25","slug":"how-to-make-a-battery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1643","title":{"rendered":"How to make a battery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Overview<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"DSC01488\"<\/a>A bit of science fun for Grace. We made a battery out of zinc washers and copper coins.
\n

\nWhat we did<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"DSC01446\"<\/a>The aim was to try and power a small LED using a home-made battery.
\n

\n\"DSC01450\"<\/a>First, cut two short lengths of copper wire, and strip the ends. <\/p>\n

Stick the end of one piece of wire to a zinc washer.
\n

\n\"DSC01454\"<\/a>Stick the end of the other piece of wire to a 2p coin.<\/p>\n

This gives us the top and bottom of our battery.<\/p>\n

Attach the other ends of the wires to the pins of a small LED – we went for the lowest voltage LED that we could find at maplins<\/a>.
\n

\n\"DSC01456\"<\/a>We cut up a 3p washing cloth<\/a> into small squares the size of our zinc washers. <\/p>\n

Then soaked them an electrolyte liquid.
\n

\n\"DSC01459\"<\/a>Googling for what makes a suitable electrolyte liquid returns a variety opinions, so we tried a few approaches.<\/p>\n

We made three batteries – one using lemon juice, one with vinegar and one using hot salty water. The vinegar seemed to result in the brightest LED.
\n

\n\"DSC01460\"<\/a>We then started building up layers – starting with the 2p coin with the wire stuck to it, then putting a zinc washer on top, then a piece of soaked cloth. <\/p>\n

Copper, zinc, soaked cloth, copper, zinc, soaked cloth, etc.
\n

\n\"DSC01462\"<\/a>Finally, we put the zinc washer with the other wire stuck to it on top, completing the circuit.
\n

\n\"DSC01466\"<\/a>Ta da! We had our battery. \ud83d\ude42
\n

\n\"DSC01483\"<\/a>The LED was surprisingly bright! <\/p>\n

I wasn’t sure whether this was gonna work (my electronics knowledge kinda sucks), but it worked really well first time.
\n

\n\"DSC01478\"<\/a>Another surprise was the way that the zinc washers seemed to scorch. <\/p>\n

A scorch mark the shape of the 2p coin next to it was left on each of the washers.
\n

\n\"DSC01481\"<\/a>A before-and-after shows the effect of being in our little battery!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Overview A bit of science fun for Grace. We made a battery out of zinc washers and copper coins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[328,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kids","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dalelane.co.uk\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}