Junk Yard Battery Contest

The Stop bath ate the roofing tin after a month and the cell went dead.

The Vinegar and roof copper and tin cell pots held up for a month or even two, giving

meter readings of a volt.

I poured the stuff out last week when readings fell to .555.

I've got a print on a pile of the wiring to combine the cells that I got

from the Duracell site.

I imagine now crushing wet wipes wrapped around dirt and a nail with

aluminum foil, and putting a meter on that.

Otherwise I've been involved with the APIX blog.

Actually we don't all know how these things work.

As well it is one thing to know how something works in general in words, and another to know how to make it.

Further my goal as far as what has become a hobby for me, is to know how to make batteries from common household stuff. How much magnesium is actually there in the dirt of my yard?

Could I get a volt from a handful of dirt squashed by hand into a handi wipe and some aluminum foil?

What if I buy some of that zinc oxide at the drug store people put on their noses, and smash it together with charcoal and put a nail through the center? Would pulverized coal laying by the railroad tracks be better?

(The weakest cells I made were made with aluminum cans by the way.)

For instance I know where to find lead in the form of fishing line sinkers, but don't know how to find or make lead oxide, at least not yet.

The septic tank battery will be interesting to figure out, though it may well be that in the future all septic tanks will double as fuel cells because of that genitically engineered bacteria I heard about a couple of months ago.

At anyrate I really appreciate your participation in what has become my current little hobby.

(My last hobby was launching model rockets with messages of peace on them in Manhattan. Imagine if Palistinians just switched over to sending Estes type rockets to Isreal, instead of the sorts of rockets they have been using?)

-Such a thing flows from my theories of Pro-Active Civil Demonstration.

Civilization rests on an excess of energy, and I think batteries are under appreciated.

Eventually I hope to standardize Junk Yard Battery designs so it is commonly known world wide how to make batteries, that will provide at least lighting, and communications.

I want Boy Scouts to be able to make batteries same as they know how to start fires!

This one seems interesting. I "paid" the photocopier for my thesis with static from the carpet. That was fun!

But seriously, around here the soil is "acid sulfate" type in many locations. Basically, if it's been dry and then water is added, sulfuric acid drains away into the creeks and rivers. We cannot use steel posts as they corrode away in weeks.

I'll see what we can get with two dissimilar metals driven into the soild. (Like a steel car axle and a scrap engine block (aluminium)).

I don't think it will be re-chargeable, but I know of one river flat here that's over 100 acres of acid soil, maybe we just build a huge wet cell.

Fairly low cost, but not everyone has a battery in their back yard.

Regarding Aluminium cans, there is an urban myth around Aus that kids in Tasmania were stringing cans together and putting them into copper rich streams.

Nature takes its course and they end up with free form copper that they can sell to the scrap merchants.

Galvanic effect. Don't know what the increased Aluminium did to the Altzheimers ratio downstream though.

I'm still willing to try.....I'll get some lemons, stick some bits of metal in them 'n stuff. All I need is someone to tell me where to stick them............at least my bath had some pictures by way of closure.........ain't no justice.......big lemons/small lemons? I dunno......the zinc tacks have fallen of me garden shed......got some pre 1991 'coppers' as well............... Even willing ta bust up an LED gadget..........didn't even tell me how to rig it up to a small clock............

Nice to see my first CR-4 questions' resultant Del Contest still keeps going.

Appreciated the info about LED draws of red compared to white.

I myself have not been doing further experiments since I had good cell success with Roofing copper strips, and tin strips in white vinegar. (highest volts for the longest for meter measurements.)

I feel bad I didn't do the proper wiring together to connect the cells in such a way as to actually get a light to burn. -But hey, I made a speech and had a successful rocket launch on April Fools.

In another thread about how to make a Fuel Cell, I posited that the Boy Scout Handbook ought to have a section on how to make a useful battery same as you are taught to make a fire, since batteries powered the Telegraph, thus ushering in the modern age.

After making my cells in the 750 square foot house we live in I started to think making dry cell batteries from charcoal? cardboard, dirt? would be a better idea considering how much space I'd need for wine carafes full of vinegar.

Possibly it is time for the Dry Cell Junk Yard Battery Design Contest that is actually useful to Boy Scouts, and Girl Scouts, Explorers? I need to check with my Nephew, the Eagle Scout to find out where the Scouts are as far as this thinking about batteries is concerned.

Truly I wish I had all the Merit Badge Books for part of my reference library.

Anyway it was nice to see an addition to the thread.

The Scouts, being rather Eco-centric and resourceful by nature (pun intended), would probably base their battery on urine with electrodes of lead and copper that they harvest from trees. That might make a battery bank powerful enough to to operate a cell phone (communications, electronics and public speaking badges) to order out pizza delivery from the strip mall down the road.

For a minute I thought harvesting lead from trees was a silly idea, but then remembered shotgun pellets. Well armed Boy Scouts and Girls may well be able to piss on bulllets wrapped in foil somehow. In Butner, Oxford? NC, and on many old bombing ranges you are likely to ruin your chainsaw due to embedded shrapnel.

Boy Scout Batteries may well be made from what's left at the firing range.

The Mess Hall may have some saltwater as an electrolyte, though vinegar worked well for me with my scraps, and the mess hall ought to have some of that as well.

I've gotta say that all this messing with battery stuff gives me a real respect for those humble batteries we buy at the store!!! They generate Volts and Amps, while I can't seem to get even a 1/10 of a Volt going! Woof!!!