Orange you glad to see science?
Thanks Fadia Lekouaghet for sharing this post and introducing me to Caleb Charland’s art. In grade school, kids are shown how to make a circuit with a lemon or tomato but this is better way to get the point across and get kids interesting in science.
Here’s a link for those that want to try at home.
http://www.ehow.com/how_4884677_make-light-bulb-experiment.html
See the explanation of how it works in the comment by Fernando J. Rodriguez
#ScienceEveryday
Originally shared by Fadia Lekouaghet
What if pictures begin as simple questions…
Caleb Charland is a photographer that captures the everyday physical phenomena which we never think about in a unique and inspiring way.
The photo below is one of his works. it shows an *Orange Battery*.
The photographer uses still-life arrangements, for instance, apples and potatoes as an electrical source for the lamp that illuminates the resulting photograph. In this image he used the orange’s natural wedges as the cells for the battery, which were held up-right with an armature of small wooden skewers.
The amazing work took 14 hours of exposure.
Caleb Charland work: http://goo.gl/qP6xcp
July 26, 2013
My pleasure Chad Haney! 🙂
July 26, 2013
14 hours exposure!??
Maybe he should have used two oranges, or a grapefruit, for more power, or a higher ISO setting. 😉
Great photo, jokes aside.
Unfortunately the e-how link you gave has the electrochemistry simplified so much that the explanation is wrong Chad Haney. Good to get the kids interested but not educated in science.
July 26, 2013
Thanks Fernando J. Rodriguez I glanced at the article quickly. I was more interested in finding a link to list the requirements and steps. I’ll fix it later since I’m still at work. I’ll be more careful in the future.
July 26, 2013
I posted what I think is still a simple, but better, explanation in the ScienceSunday post:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/109783903175191665261/posts/M78wWXuVbYm
Feel free to
stealborrow what I wrote.July 26, 2013
For convenience I’m copying also here how I would have wrote it:
The acid found in an orange contains ionsCorrected: The orange juice contains salts, which separate into “ions” (separate parts, one with negative charge and the other positive), that makes the juice an electricity conductor.
which then react to the nails that are inserted into itCorrected: Juice also contains acids (milder than our own gastric juices, BTW) strong enough to slowly dissolve some metals.
Each nail is made from a different material, causing a positive and negative charge.Corrected: Different metals react in different ways with acids and with each other, this produces differences in electrical potential (that is: they have different levels of energy).
When these charges are brought togetherCorrected: When some different metals are put into electrical contact, through the juice, and through the wires in this experiment, the differences in potential (which in this context is another word for voltage) results in a flow of electrons.
the produce enough electricityCorrected: A flow of electrons is what we call electricity, with an orange (as well as other citric or acidic fruits) the reaction between the metals and the acids in the juices is enough…
… to light an LED light bulb.
This last part is actually correct. 🙂
Notice that I said what I wrote is “corrected” not necessarily 100% correct, I’m still simplifying things (one could take a university level course in electrochemistry and still not cover completely this vast subject).
July 27, 2013
Thanks Fernando J. Rodriguez
July 31, 2013
Very cool!