Shaking Triboelectric Nanogenerator 

Hi Kieran, we have not calculated voltage and current values for these nanogenerators, but we have measured them. The current is fairly low (microamps), but these can produce upwards of 10 volts. Different versions of TENGs can produce over 100 volts. I encourage you to try measuring the voltage yourself!

Hi Syca, it's hard to say for sure without seeing what you've built. One common error we see is the metal from the wires is not making good contact with the aluminum foil, so be sure to check that. Transparent office tape should work just fine. Please note that not all LEDs are the same and that the light from the LEDs will be pretty dim, so a dark place to test it is recommended. I also recommend finding a green LED with a clear bulb, like these: smile.amazon.com/microtivity-IL132-Clear-Green-Resistors/dp/B004UZBPCS/

Hi TheFluffyPineapple, we used "breadboard jumper wires" and stripped the coating from them to get bare wire. The manufacturer says they are tin-plated copper wire. We have had success with multiple types of wires, including the metal in pipe cleaners and sandwich bag ties. Hope that helps!

Thanks for watching! The tape backing happens to be made out of a material that is pretty good at picking up electrons. Scientists are still studying the fundamental reasons why some materials are better than others, and in the case of triboelectricity, they try to compare materials to one another in what's called the "Triboelectric Series". Wikipedia has a triboelectric series that can give you a sense of where some materials rank (Scotch Tape is towards the bottom, meaning it's better at picking up electrons) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triboelectric_effect#Triboelectric_series Scientists published a more accurate version last year (just to show it's an active area of research!): www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09461-x

not all materials are as good for it, also rubber has a lot of grip so while many types of rubber indeed do work well in the triboelectric effect(for example latex works very well for it and generates super high voltages very easily) it still doesn't generate a lot in this usecase since the rubber has a lot of grip and so will have impact but no sliding or such and the sliding will generate a lot of power here compared to only the tapping. so the using of clear tape is because it tends to be the same around the world. and that way any thing can be uses as a ball and you just need to cover it with tape, that is why you can also use a normal rock or even metal ball. the tape also is slippery/smooth on the outside causing a lot of sliding motion on the inside this will greatly increase the amount of energy generation since rubber would just touch or roll and not slip. actually as a fun thing this also is why in sandsuckers(mashines which pump up sand from the bottom of a lake). they have channels to move the water with sand, they used to made of just metal but the sand would be grinded through very rapidly since the metal is smooth so the sand forms a sliding motion. eventually they decided to add a thin layer of rubber in it and the channels wouldn't really degrade anymore at all since the sand no longer slided/rubber over it but instead had so much grip that it kind of rolled over it when it hit is thus not damaging the material. in these eggs roughly the same is happening but plastic isn't hard or such but using slipery/smooth plastic compared to rubber allows it to slide a lot more instead of having grip and just rolling or such.

The ball itself is not great at taking electrons from the aluminum foil, so we covered it with a material that is better able to take electrons so that the electrons can be transferred between the two halves of the device. Hope that helps!

@@WisconsinMrsec what can we use instead of tape ?