Inspire a New Generation of Young Scientists with Eveready

Date : 23 June 2016

"Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire” ~ William Butler Yeats

The June/July school holidays are upon us and Eveready would like to encourage parents to use this opportunity to inspire their child to develop a passion and love for science through education, by conducting easy and fun experiments at home.

The Lemon Powered Clock

To start you off, we wanted to begin with an easy and fun experiment on how to make a lemon powered clock! This experiment is a great way to help your children understand batteries. How they work and what makes them stop working. Batteries are all around us, in our remote controls, toys, cars, flashlights and cell phones, yet most of us forget to educate our children on how they work.

The lemon powered clock is a simple type of electrical battery, which is commonly made for school science projects, because it illustrates a battery’s main components.

Below is an easy to follow step by step process, from the Boys’ Life Magazine, on how to make your very own digital clock powered by lemons!

Materials and Equipment Needed:

• 2 ripe lemons
• Low voltage digital clock (Use a clock that takes one AA battery or a 1.5-volt button cell battery. One AA battery has about 1.5 volts of energy. Two lemons should produce about 1.5 volts).
• 2 copper pennies
• 38” length of copper wire
• 2 galvanised nails (Galvanised nails are coated with zinc).
• Knife
• Scissors

The Process:

Roll the lemons on a hard surface to loosen the pulp. This will make the lemons juicy and help the electrons move through the lemons.
Wrap one end of a wire around a penny and the other around the end of a nail. (these will be used to connect the lemons together. Connecting lemons with metal wires adds voltage from each lemon. The more lemons you connect together, the higher the voltage).
Connect a second wire to a penny and leave the other end bare.
Wrap the third wire around a nail and leave the other end bare.
Cut a slit in each lemon just large enough to insert the pennies. Insert the pennies and nails. (make sure the copper wire has good contact with both the pennies and nails, and make sure the pennies and the nails make good contact with the lemon pulp and juice).
Remove the battery from the clock and touch the wires to the positive and negative terminals in the clock. If your clock doesn’t work, try switching the wires.

This is only one of the many science experiments, which are easy to do, do not require much time and are educational and fun, for you to do with your children. Eveready would like to encourage parents to make a thoughtful effort, during their child’s early years, as they are in a unique position to help their children develop learning and thinking skills. It does not matter what type of experiment you explore with your child, as long as their mind is stimulated in a positive and creative environment.