| Author | Message | ||
     Electricearth (Electricearth) New member Username: Electricearth Post Number: 2 Registered: 3-2007 |
Ok, I had this idea to get electricity from soil. Turns out there is some sort of electricity in there, when I insert a Zinc screw and a copper screw into moist soil, I get about .60-1 volts of power, next to no amperage though. I was thinking I could possibly increase this voltage by making series and parallel formations of screws, problem is that since it is not seperate soil it is actually shorting out the ciruit and only giving me the voltage that I would have gotten from one pair of screws, instead of the 20 that I put in the soil linking them together in a series formation(I stuck the screws in a plastic mesh, so if I wanted to I could put soil over it to hide the zinc and copper screws. One other theory that I had was that the Zinc was somehow reacting with the carbon in the soil, and maybe even the trace of acid in it. I want to be able to get enough electricity from the soil to charge a pair of rechargable AA batteries. Anyone have any ideas to possibly get that amount of electricity? | ||
| Electricearth (Electricearth) New member Username: Electricearth Post Number: 3 Registered: 3-2007 |
Sorry about the double post, I didn't know the first one went through. | ||
| Joshua Martin (Mr_) Senior Member Username: Mr_ Post Number: 112 Registered: 1-2006 |
You just made a battery,congrats  It is not free energey but it is neat though. | ||
| Simon Quellen Field (Sfield) Senior Member Username: Sfield Post Number: 1676 Registered: 12-2004 |
The energy is coming from the chemical reaction between the zinc and the electrolyte. When the zinc is used up, you need to recover it from the soil by adding energy (such as using a battery to electroplate it back onto the screw. The energy came from the initial refining of the zinc from the zinc ore. |
