Jan 30, 2007
Potato Powered mp3 Player – Not!
Fed up with using up so many batteries? Rechargeables giving you poor mileage? Then why not try a couple of sweet potatoes instead.
In this “video tutorial”, you’ll learn how to use a couple of galvanized (zinc coated) nails, some bare copper wire, a pair of mini crocodile clips, AND two sweet potatoes, to power up your mp3 player with not a conventional battery in sight. Great video and the music’s sweet too.
The Hole – video powered by Metacafe
This appliance is, of course, closely related to the lemon battery (or more formally lemon cell) familiar to anyone who’s searched for a high school science project. Two different metallic objects dipped into a conduction solution (an electrolyte) will produce an electrochemical reaction the byproduct of which is electricity. A single lemon is usually enough to illuminate a flashlight bulb, but two sweet potatoes are apparently required for an mp3 player. Yes, it reduces the portability of your player, but just think…no more buying batteries! Of course, things might get a bit smelly as those sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) start to go off.
"Deceived Wisdom: Why What You Thought Was Right Is Wrong" from David Bradley. Available now on 
Because of the repeated mention of the “word” mp3 in this post, it gets quite a significant proportion of the comment spam on sciencebase.com. 99.999% of it is picked up by our spam filters and dumped, but one such spam comment almost slipped through. Said comment was pointing to a site calling itself googlemp3. It exists as of May 5, but I suspect site registrant Duanne J will receive a note from Google’s lawyers any day now, unless of course he works for Google, in which case Google itself will get a call from the RIAA.
You don’t even need a single lemon. The lemon in the standard high-school demo is really just there for dramatic effect – light up a bulb with a lemon, who’s going to forget that in a hurry. All you really need is a conducting solution into which to place the two electrodes. It is the difference in relative energy of the metals that provides the potential gradient, the electrolyte simply acts as a medium for the transfer of electrons to complete a circuit that can do work. You would still be able to light the bulb with half, quarter, eighth or smaller chunk of lemon so long as you could insert the electrodes without them coming into contact with each other.
As was mentioned earlier this sweet potato demonstration is a spoof. It won’t work with one, two or even a million potatoes wired up like this. Wire it up properly though and the conducting solution within a single yam would be enough to carry the current and power the mp3 player.
A single lemon is usually enough to illuminate a flashlight bulb, but two sweet potatoes are apparently required for an mp3 player. Yes, it reduces the portability of your player, but just think…no more buying batteries! Of course, things might get a bit smelly as those sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) start to go off…
Like I said in an earlier comment, you have to use the zinc-coated nail and the copper wires as the electrodes. Each embedded a conducting media (whether a lemon, or electrolyte solution. Here’s another video showing that you can get just over one volt from a single battery. So you might need one and a half to power your mp3 player. Actually that’s also a little joke, one and a half lemons would give you just over two volts, the size of lemon is irrelevant, it’s the copper and zinc that matter.
me the fool tryed to do this for my 11 year old son of course it did not work.is there any other way it will work to power a mp3 player getting 1.6 on my voltmeter when they are wired the proper way but still wont power the mp3 the mp3 takes 1 aaa can anyone help with this project
Father seek of help