When Life Gives You Lemons...Make A Battery

Short Wave

NPR

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2021

⏱️ 10 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We're going "Back To School" today, revisiting a classic at-home experiment that turns lemons into batteries — powerful enough to turn on a clock or a small lightbulb. But how does the science driving that process show up in household batteries we use daily? Emily Kwong and Maddie Sofia talk battery 101 with environmental engineer Jenelle Fortunato.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody, Maddie Sifaya here.
0:11.0	And Emily Quang.
0:12.2	With another Back to School episode where we take a basic science concept, you may have
0:18.2	learned in school, but maybe you know never really learned?
0:21.7	Okay.
0:22.7	This one was inspired by listener Violet Thomas in Uquiavica Alaska.
0:26.8	You're always bringing us back to Alaska, Emily Quang.
0:29.4	Any opportunity to go back, I will take.
0:32.6	Violet wanted to know what the plus sides and minus sides of a battery mean.
0:38.6	Simple question, but it took me back all the way back to science class and the lemon
0:44.6	battery experiment.
0:45.6	Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, where you run some wires from a lemon and try to power something
0:50.0	like a tiny light bulb.
0:51.6	Yes.
0:52.6	We love science, yes we do.
0:54.6	We love science, yes we do.
0:56.6	We love science, yes we do.
0:58.6	We love science, yes we do.
1:00.6	I love a good science to your quang, right?
1:03.8	So this video is from a science outreach program called Science You, hosted by Penn State.
1:08.3	Can you get power from a lemon?
1:10.4	Llamas are powerfully sour.
	...

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