Re: Wet cell battery made with coins

Hello David,
I'm sorry that this reply probably comes too late.

You are probably aware that you are trying to make a battery out of two different metals ( a copper penny and a zinc dime) and an electrolyte (lemon juice).The original was by Volta, the inventor whose name we borrow for the "volt". See ht tp://fargo.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/~lewis/electricity/pages/volta.html for example.

The most common mistake is to put a layer of lemon-soaked paper between every coin rather than between every pair of coins. That is the stacking order should be penny/paper/dime/penny/paper/dime and so on. Electrical shorts are unfortunately easily created in this experiment, since the lemon juice can run between all the layers and ruin the effect. Be sure to begin and end the stack with different coins (as in the example above). New pennies (after 1982) won't work too well either... not enough copper! Clean coins work better. Try aluminum foil instead of one of the coin types. There are lots of web sites describing the same experiment, some using whole lemons. See if you can find stacking faults in any of them.
http://www.ushistory .org/franklin/fun/lemon.htm
htt p://www.i5ive.com/article.cfm/homeschooling_science_fun/55462
http://www.irish- energy.ie/Smart_E/activities/exper/lemon.htm
http://freeweb.pdq.net/h eadstrong/lemon.htm
http://www.schoolnet.ca/general/club- electrique/e/page9.html
http ://www.open2.net/science/roughscience/library/batteries.htm
http://www.howstuffworks.com/first-time.htm? referer=battery1.htm
http://www.mada.org.il/website/html/eng/6/6-5.htm
http://www.fo rtbragg.k12.ca.us/AG/PhysSci/current.html

Try it anyway, even if its too late.

Yours,

Dr. Thomas