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.
I saw a very similar video showing how to charge an iPod with an onion. It was brilliantly done but basically amounted to shoving the USB cable into the onion. There were lots of follow-ups showing how this could not possibly work and that the voltage you get from such an act is negligible.
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Radio Shack, perhaps? But, don’t follow this video it’s a spoof. Read the comments to see how it is really done.
where can you get the crocodile clips and the lil wire that go thro
It’s probably possible that you could boot up the mp3 player chip and screen with 0.8V but almost certainly couldn’t drive a couple of speakers.
The whole thing is a***fake*** !!! As David Bradley already said on Feb 5 2007 , to get even a minimum chance, you had to put both the copper and the zinc in the same potato. You would get a voltage of about 0.8V. Much to little even to operate a mp3-player that is usually driven by a single battery with 1.5V. Besides this fact, the current that this potato-battery provides is much too low to operate a player. To double the voltage, you could work with two potatoes, each equipped with one copper and one zinc. The copper from one potato would then be connected to the zinc from the other one. this would give around 1.5V.
Even then, the problem with the low current remains. If this wasn’t enough, to pretend to operate two speakers with the same – non-working! – battery is really ridiculous.
The whole thing has the potential to become one of the most stupid internet-fakes I’ve ever heard.
Here in Germany the science-magazine of the German TV has this thing on his internet-page. This only shows, that tv-makers are the same bunch of stupids everywhere in the world.