So my kids and I were trying to do the lemon battery experiment. Please read through as this is not the usual suspect mistake.
What happens is that we are getting very low readings from individual lemons (0.1-0.2V), but weirdly enough when we try making a series circuit, the voltage does not add up. It even drops sometimes. And yes, I am doing things right: zinc plated nails and copper, zink to copper connection, using aligator clip wires etc. I checked my voltmeter with regular 1.5 V batteries and it works fine. I am not even worried about powering a low voltage LED, I don't know why the series circuit does not add up voltage (looked up quite a bit on possible errors,, but every forum starts with "check to make sure you wire correctly, or you don't have enough amp to light a bulb, but see above, I'd like to know what could cause the series to not work).
I talked to a coleague professor from my university in the physics department (I am in math) and he tried to explain that if the internal resistence of the lemon is very high, then the voltmeter might yield errors (although even him admitted this is a bit difficult to imagine). I am just at a loss; I tried two types of lemons, also limes, two types of zinc nails. The series won't work. Even if I try one lemon with one usual 1.5 V battery they won't add up but rather give some strange reading of 0.9~1.1V, as if the lemon is more of a consumer. And no, I am not shorting inside the lemon (tried, it obviously reduces the reading to 0).
If anyone has any good technical idea of what could be going on, or heard of this before (beyond check the connections, reset and try again...) it would be very much appreciated. It has been frustrating also for the kids to watch all these online videos where this seems so easy, but when we try, not as much...
Thanks,
Mio
What happens is that we are getting very low readings from individual lemons (0.1-0.2V), but weirdly enough when we try making a series circuit, the voltage does not add up. It even drops sometimes. And yes, I am doing things right: zinc plated nails and copper, zink to copper connection, using aligator clip wires etc. I checked my voltmeter with regular 1.5 V batteries and it works fine. I am not even worried about powering a low voltage LED, I don't know why the series circuit does not add up voltage (looked up quite a bit on possible errors,, but every forum starts with "check to make sure you wire correctly, or you don't have enough amp to light a bulb, but see above, I'd like to know what could cause the series to not work).
I talked to a coleague professor from my university in the physics department (I am in math) and he tried to explain that if the internal resistence of the lemon is very high, then the voltmeter might yield errors (although even him admitted this is a bit difficult to imagine). I am just at a loss; I tried two types of lemons, also limes, two types of zinc nails. The series won't work. Even if I try one lemon with one usual 1.5 V battery they won't add up but rather give some strange reading of 0.9~1.1V, as if the lemon is more of a consumer. And no, I am not shorting inside the lemon (tried, it obviously reduces the reading to 0).
If anyone has any good technical idea of what could be going on, or heard of this before (beyond check the connections, reset and try again...) it would be very much appreciated. It has been frustrating also for the kids to watch all these online videos where this seems so easy, but when we try, not as much...
Thanks,
Mio