Some Potato Numbers and Unsafe Practices

Time to get the Mar-Cell out of the fridge so we can do some work.  Yes I put it in the fridge, it’s part vegetable.  No I have no idea if it helped.  How many multi-cell potato batteries do you think I have.  This isn’t normal people!  Stop pretending it is. 😛

Alright since you asked for it, let me get you some solid numbers on the Mar-Cell (potato battery).  Here’s what I’m getting with no load on the circuit.

Unloaded Voltmeter
Unloaded Voltmeter

Now let’s see how it goes with something real.

Led Load Added
Led Load Added

And of course the moment we add some load to it, the thing sinks like the Titanic.  Stop complaining and hold on tight Rose, we’re looking at the current now.

 

The Potato Current
The Potato Current

I know, right?  Disappointing.  But what do you expect from a vegetable.  I knew I was going to need more when I first started this.  A lot more.  But I’m going to push ahead and squeeze every bit I can out it.

MORE POWER!!
MORE POWER!!

You know what I’m thinking. 🙂  Let’s supercharge this baby.  Who says you can’t charge a potato.  Just because you’ve never seen it done… in fact hang on a second.  Not dodgy enough.  I have a better idea.  Let’s slam charge this puppy.

PUUUUUSH!
PUUUUUSH!

Now let me preface this by saying this is a stupid idea.  But as you can see by the vodka bottle hiding in the back there, I’m not too grounded in safety at the moment.  Lucky it’s maxing out at 0.01 amp.  So let’s have a few drinks and let that sit for a bit…

What? You don't charge yours?
What? You don’t charge yours?

So I let it sit fit for about an hour and a half and you can see it did indeed pick up a charge.  The problem here is that it’s not looking like it’ll hold it.  It started dropping about 0.01 volt a second straight away.  So I guess the big question is, where will it settle?  Or further more, how long will it take to deplete to the point of unusable?  5 mins later we’re down to 8 volt and slowly falling.

At this point I’m going to put this baby on ice until tomorrow as I have work in the morning, but I’ll take a quick measurement in the morning to see where it settled.  Back to the planet Hoth for you spuddy.  I guess I should let you in on the device this is intended to power (if you don’t already know), but I’ll do that tomorrow along with a few more battery design tests.  Back to the padded cell with me.

morningAfterCharge

UPDATE:  For those who are curious, the charging didn’t survive the night.  As you can see it dropped and sat down around 5 volts.  It’s probably time I stop tweaking this one and either let it run down naturally with no load to see what its shelf life is or hook it up to a known load and see how long it takes to go flat.  In the mean time I have 2 other designs to test.

 

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