How to Make a Potato Light

If you want to know how to make a potato light, this is the perfect place to look! Making a potato light is a fun experiment to do for a school project or as an educational family project.

You can make this potato light with a few household items and a possible trip to the hardware and grocery store.

Learning how to make a potato light is fun, easy and a pretty quick process. Enjoy!

Things You'll Need

• 2-3 Potatoes (The fresher the Better)
• 4-6 Shiny Pennies
• 4-6 Galvanized Steel Nails
• 6-9 eight inch lengths of insulated copper wire, each with insulation stripped off one end.
• LED Light
• OPTIONAL: Alligator Clips

Instructions

1. First, you will want to cut the potatoes in half.

2. Place the Potato halves flat side down in a line. You can also put them together in a rectangle or box format if that is preferable to you.

   *At least in the beginning it may be easier if they are in a single file line, though you may have to move them closer to together depending on the length of your copper wire.

3. Next, take your knife and make a small incision in one side of each potato half. The incision should be large enough so your penny can fit snugly into the potato with just the end hanging out.

4. Now, you will want to hook up your copper and zinc ions, or your pennies and galvanized nails.

   Separate 1 Galvanized Nail, 1 Shiny Penny and 2 eight inch wires from the group. Put these aside.

5. Pair up the rest of your Shiny pennies and Galvanized nails with their counterparts.

   Wrap the end of one piece of wire around each penny and wrap the other end of the wire around each nail.

   **At this point all your pennies and nails should be connected by a wire except the two separated at the beginning.

6. Now, you will want to attach one end of your extra wires to your single galvanized nail. Put this into the first potato half. Put the wire ending out to the side

   **Make sure you put the nail about a half inch away from where you will put your penny. The copper and zinc can NOT touch for the experiment to work.

7. Now take a linked penny and push it into the first potato half. Put its linked nail into the second potato half (about a half inch away from the slot for the penny).

   **The further down you can push your penny into the potato, the better your charge will be.

8. Repeat the process until you are at your final potato half. Wrap your remaining wire end to your penny and place it in to the last potato.

9. For the final step, you will take the two wire ends that are remaining (one linked to the first nail and one linked to the last penny) and hook it up to your LED light!!!

   If you have a new LED light, you will notice that one leg is longer than the other. Tie the end of the wire connected to the nail to the longer leg and the wire connected to the penny should be wrapped around the shorter leg.

Tips & Warnings

• If it doesn't work immediately, make sure everything is set up correctly and try it again. There is a possibility that the voltage is not strong enough to produce a large light. Try turning off the light to see if you can see the glow.

• Take pictures of your experiment, if in school ask if you can get extra credit from your science teacher by documenting the experiment for the class and sharing photos.

• Once you are an expert, this would make a great presentation for class or class activity.

Resources

• 500 LB Potato Battery
• The Science Behind It