One of our MAKE readers sent in this potato powered battery, the site is down now, but there is a mirror – “I built a potato battery out of 500 pounds of potatoes. It powered a small sound system. I installed the battery and sound system in the back of a U-Haul truck and drove it around town inviting people to enter the truck and take a listen….Each potato generates about 0.5 volts and 0.2 milliamperes. I connected groups of potatoes together in series to increase voltage and then connected these groups together in parallel to increase amperage. The entire 500 lb battery generated around 5 volts and 4 milliamperes. Don’t eat potatoes after using them for a battery.” [via] – Mirror & Link.
16 thoughts on “500 lb Potato Battery”
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500 pounds and it can’t even drive an LED.
Is anyone else sick of all these galvanic cell postings. We get it, stick electrodes in an electrolyte, you get a battery. Enough already.
oracle, click the suggest a site link and send in some site and projects you’d like to see on make. we’ll post them up! i think out of all the posts on make there are likely less than 0.01% which are galvanic cells?
what I really want to know is how come you can’t eat the taters after?? If I do, what is the chance I will gain incredible superpowers?
5cameron, the metals form ions which disolve into the electrolyte, and you don’t want to east metal ions. Unless you count destroying your own brain as a superpower, there is zero chance ;).
well… its certainly not an incredible one.
Thanks for the info though!
I found a project that had a car driven by one of these potato batteries. I’m wondering if anyone has any idea how this might work.
sorry about that, here is the link
my god…it’s like the matrix, only with potatoes.
whats the web sight with the car driven by potatoes