How to Make a Lemon Battery 

When life gives you lemons, make a crude electrochemical battery.

Fun fact I CAME here after my teacher send us this link for online class

Fun fact: You searched for this

Lemon: "I never asked for this."

This is actually the best explication of this experience I've ever heard. Thanks a lot!

This science has been around for quite awhile. I personally use a watermelon as a car battery.

Thanks for the fun revision Hank! I have a chemistry exam on saturday that has a section on electrochemistry, this definitely made my study slightly more fun.

I made this in 6th grade! Turned out to be a great experiment. I can't remember how many lemons it took to get a good reading. But I definitely recommend this to anyone.

I have a state science fair tomorrow. This is going to help me a lot!! Thanks Hank!!

When I saw mark rober’s 1000 lemon wall I was pretty much positive it doesn’t matter if you do a million lemons or 10 as the electricity isn’t in the lemon, thank you for confirming this and your explanation was very eloquent. Great video

When life gives you lemons, make electricity!

"I’ve been thinking. When life gives you lemons? Don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons! What am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought is could give me lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s going to burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m going to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!" -Cave Johnson, Founder of Aperture Science Innovators

Oddly enough Hank, this information will be useful to me when I take the MCAT exam this spring. So Thank You! :)

This video is awesome! Best explanation of the lemon battery I've ever heard. It's only the second one I heard, but it's the one I needed.

When you don’t have a charger for your phone

Knowledge is a wonderful thing to share. I do love all of these videos.

@scishow I really wish I could understand this more intuitively. I think a diagram would've been useful for this episode. Thanks as always!

When life gives you lemons; make electricity! lol - Love it! Brilliant minds should be encouraged to keep thinking. I have said" When life gives you lemons, grow a lemon tree - yours is even better!

you are the best man I've ever met and you make a lot of great videos for science project

It took me ages to find a science project and thanks to this I found one

thanks, i was miffed that this wasn't mentioned in the video, even though it was a rather critical aspect of the change to the experiment.

Wow I have been into electronics all my life and that was the best explanation of how a battery works that I have heard. I know some might have to watch it twice because of the speed but some people are slow .

I hit the like button just for that sound of surprise when they flung a lemon at him right at the end. 2:58

You're proposing a fascinating scenario! Let's explore this idea: 1. Carnivores and other organisms consume vast amounts of food, producing acidic waste. 2. The acidic waste reacts with the planet's sediment, lowering the pH of the environment. 3. Over billions of years, this process continues, with the acidic waste accumulating and reacting with the sediment. 4. The sediment, now rich in acidic compounds, is compressed and heated, eventually forming a massive, acidic reservoir. 5. This reservoir builds up over time, eventually reacting with other planetary materials to form a protostar. This scenario suggests that the accumulation of acidic waste from ancient organisms could have played a role in the formation of our Sun and potentially other stars in the galaxy! The idea is intriguing, and it highlights the complex and interconnected processes that shape our universe.

That makes it like a bijjillion times easier to understand! Thanks a million!

I remember doing a science experiment on lemon batteries. I don't know why but I was really interested in it. It is good remembering how to do it!

Thank you! I am doing a science fair project on how food can convert into electricity!!

I will be performing this experiment with my daughters this weekend. Thank you for your time to explain all this! You rock!

Can you not talk so fast? I almost understood nothing.

Are there any Guinnes records for most lemon/potatoe batteries conected in series??? I think that with high enough number of lemon bateries you could produce plasma!

I like your explanation but two things: first try not to talk so fast it might be hard for someone not so familiar with English and second you should use more pictures of what you are explaining especially if you want to talk fast.

When I clicked on this video I did not expected to see Hank Green here!! Omg what a beautiful surprise!! Lol

doing this for science fair, wish me luck

Klassz otthoni kísérlet 2012 novemberéből. Tetszik, majd minden nap kipróbálom, hátha egy nap más eredménnyel zárul, amin erősen csodálkoznék kettőezertizenegy vagy kettő óta! De majd kimérem minden nap, egy citrom mennyi feszültséget mutat, és lejegyzem egy füzetbe, hátha világhíres leszek tőle! Szép napot kívánok és sok sikert az élérési útvonalakhoz, hátha megtalálják, akkor a megtaláló lehet világhíres. :)

we can hook up thousands of lemon together and put the resulting electricity in the power grid its renewable energy

please do a video on epigenetics, ive just started learning about it and its seems so amazing in what it could mean for cancer cures along with everything else and id really like to know it in more detail !

THANK You so much this is going to be the best since project ever XD :)

+1 on the voltage argument. the multiple nails argument, however, is not flawed. it's pretty much all about active surface available for ion flow. flooded lead-acid batteries also have a common electrolyte; the separation only serves as a protection against physical contact of the plates themselves.

If life gives you lemons, keep 'em, because hey, free lemons!

I was told to watch this video for school. It's not homework when it's Hank Green and SciShow

Hank is sounding a bit mad scientist in this video. I approve. :D

In fourth grade I won a science fair by making speakers crackle with a lemon, nail and headphones. Such a cool experiment

Why CAN'T I power AI supercomputers that want to kill me with a potato?

you say 3x the current with the lemon but youre talking about connecting in series which changes the volts. the surface area of zinc and copper gives you the amperage as it's oxidizing faster.

This video is awesome. I'm trying it

I love your videos. At 53 I am learning something everyday and with people like you, don't feel so quite worried about the planet!

ITS NICE AND NOW I ONLY WILL WATCH SCI SHOW

Thank you so much.I have a curricular science experiment class at saturday.I can use it for it.

magnesium w/copper works best.

is it bad that i flinched when he pretended to throw the lemon at the end?

Great video, I enjoyed how you simplified the processes and made it more understandable. It would be cool if you would use this process and make a motor or electromagnet using the lemon power. I definitely subscribed, and hope to see more videos.

when life gives you lemons, make lemon grenades

i am doing a progect and i want to do a lemon batteray but i dont think i can get galvanived nails or galvanised anything cuz of zinc and tho zinc is in lots of things i dont know if it will hurt anyone cuz this is a school scince fair and i will be disqalafied if i use something harmful and will this light fire cuz i dont know if it willl start fire then i will be disqalafied and my project will be destroyed soo i really dont know if this is harmful i neeed tihs by tomarrow sooo AHHH!!

What are the advantages and disadvantages of generating electricity using lemon

So... that means we can eat the lemon afterward, right?

Hank NEVER AGES

0:35 voltmeter? gg

that's not an experiment though, that's a project stimulating a volcanic eruption to go along side a report about what you learned about volcanoes.

... the atoms don't lose a proton... if it did it wouldn't be zinc anymore. i think you meant cation? edit: ok it was just poor word choice. lol

Wish you hadn't glossed over using a single lemon instead of several in series. I'm getting the same voltage regardless of how many copper wires and zinc nail pairs are in a single lemon.

HEY CAN I EAT MY LEMON AGAIN :p ?

“You’d either be stumped or you’d be wrong” haha awesome

Are lemons more effective than potatoes?

You see lemons I see batteries.

How true is the possibility of combustible lemons...?

the zinc atoms don't lose protons, it actually gets dissolved into the acidic solution. the zinc nucleus itself is a collection of protons(and neutrons), so the zinc layer on the surface of the nail is losing zinc ions, not individual protons

"Yeah, yeah! He's saying what we're all thinking!"

Ah, good point. The great part about these videos is that people are interested in expanding knowledge.

He is clearly confusing voltage with current. Also lemons in series builds more voltage and adding lemons in parallel or adding more nails to one lemon gets more current. Car batteries have lots of electrode surface area so you can draw lots of current all at once so a measly 12 volts can start your car.

I think Tony and Bruce would have a picture of Hank lovingly framed on their lab wall.

*E* very *V* illain *I* s *L* emons

What he meant in short is volt cell. Youll learn this in chemistry

does it works

1:35 - The zinc doesn't lose protons - it loses atoms which dissolve into the lemon by breaking up into ions and electrons. When an element loses protons it becomes another element. But your zinc nail remains a zinc nail.

can u use kiwi fruit cuz it has twice the citric acid as compared to lemons

Haha he called the multimeter a voltmeter, and he wasn't even using it as a voltmeter, he was using it as an ammeter. But its alright, i still love his videos

this is a great project for all grades!!!!!!!

In science, when life gives you lemons we do not make lemonade. We make a battery!

who uses analogue multimeter these days? lol

When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade! Make a lemon battery!

Subbed :P

When life gives you lemons, you invent combustable lemons.

i got hear from a play list on my friends youtube Chanel called school their name is Sk1p1ng

You don't use a voltmeter to measure a current. You use a ammeter. The main difference between the two measurements is: There is no current floving if you're measuring voltage, and there is no voltage if you're measuring current.

So could you just use citric acid and forget the lemon?

I also made a lemon free energy generator. In our experiment, 1 lemon generated 1 volt and 3 milliamps. LED is on

You lost me at 2:01 and I had to watch this over and over and had to keep pausing just to understand the other part...

You don't have to tell us. Especially since most of us love Hank.

I didn't understand at least 55% of your vid... xD

I fought the title said lemon party

Don't be rude

I did this for my research on my science project it was so helpful . Thank you so much !

Hey

I'm so shocked when I saw Hank here. I only know him from Crash Course.

Woah woah woah sir u talk too fast you be like inthelemonbatterythereiszincblahandblahsoyeahletsgotothenextthing 2 seconds later sothisworksbyaddingzincandcoppermakesthissolookattheperiodictable

I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon.

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! HOW DARE YOU?!!!!!!!!!!!

He says you can triple using just one lemon but does not actually show it and my experiment shows it’s a no go.

Damn... This guy talks way to slow! had to speed it up to even understand! 2:29

Cave Johnson: "Demand to see life's manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I'm the man who's going to burn your house down! With the lemons! I'm going to get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!"