{"id":67,"date":"2013-11-16T20:14:30","date_gmt":"2013-11-16T20:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.joshuagallaway.com\/blog\/?p=67"},"modified":"2013-11-21T12:43:44","modified_gmt":"2013-11-21T12:43:44","slug":"how-does-a-citrus-battery-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.joshuagallaway.com\/?p=67","title":{"rendered":"How does a citrus battery work?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"584\" height=\"329\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/DnB0sFrYtrU?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>I got an email from a producer for National Geographic a few weeks ago, and they wanted to record me explaining <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lemon_battery\">how a citrus battery works<\/a>. It&#8217;s for a new science\/comedy show that comes out next year called Duck Quacks Don&#8217;t Echo.<\/p>\n<p>You put nails made out of two different metals into some acidic fruit, like an orange. If one is zinc and one is copper, you essentially make a zinc-hydrogen cell. The battery half-reactions are 1) zinc electrodissolution (anode):<\/p>\n<p>Zn \u2192 Zn<sup>2+<\/sup> + 2e<sup>&#8211;<\/sup><\/p>\n<p>And 2) hydrogen formation (cathode):<\/p>\n<p>2H<sup>+<\/sup> + 2e<sup>&#8211;<\/sup>\u00a0\u2192 H<sub>2<\/sub><\/p>\n<p>The zinc electrodissolution obviously happens on the surface of the zinc nail, and releases electrons. These electrons are at a low potential and want to flow to someplace at high potential. The hydrogen formation has a higher potential, and occurs when the protons (H<sup>+<\/sup>) in the fruit acid meet the electrons at the copper nail to form hydrogen gas (H<sub>2<\/sub>).<\/p>\n<p>So if the two nails are connected, electrons will want to flow from the zinc nail to the copper nail. In between these two nails you place something like a cell phone. Flowing electrons are electricity, and so when they flow through the phone charger it&#8217;s electricity to charge the phone. This is how batteries work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I got an email from a producer for National Geographic a few weeks ago, and they wanted to record me explaining how a citrus battery works. It&#8217;s for a new science\/comedy show that comes out next year called Duck Quacks &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.joshuagallaway.com\/?p=67\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[12,13],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joshuagallaway.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joshuagallaway.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joshuagallaway.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joshuagallaway.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joshuagallaway.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.joshuagallaway.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":68,"href":"http:\/\/www.joshuagallaway.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions\/68"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.joshuagallaway.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joshuagallaway.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.joshuagallaway.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}