Lemon Lab

                           
This week, we started a new unit for electricity. In this lab, we expirimented with voltage ( a "field" surrounding a charged object). It's similar to the height needed for gravitational potential energy. The more height, the more Ug and the more voltage, the more Ue. We created a circuit, or a circular flow of electrons, using a lemon, copper penny, alligator chords, and a nail to create light. The more lemons that we had, the more voltage we measured. We related voltage to the batteries in our ipads. The article that I found discussed how massive the battery is in our iPads. Looking at the image above, it is clear that the battery takes up a massive portion of the device! According to my article, the ipad 3 has a 70% greater battery capacity than the previous generation-- It's larger in size than the 11-inch MacBook Air and nearly as big as the battery in today's 13-inch MacBook Air.

IPads specifically have lithium ion batteries.Lithium is well suited foe the iPads because of its ability to quickly recharge ,manageable size, and high power density. The voltage from the battery creates a large amount of electric potential energy that can be transferred into other types of energy such as sound, heat, and light.In our lab,  the energy created from the charged particles in the lemon was transferred into light. We talked in class about voltage as a mountain. In this case, the lemon was our mountain. Alone, the citrus in the lemon is neutral but when it comes in contact with charged particles such as copper and 
zinc, the lemon becomes charged and creates voltage.