Charging a smartphone using lemons

I will design, conduct, and charge an iPhone 5 with only lemons.
Grade 6

Presentation

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Hypothesis

After seeing that lemons produce 0.9 volts, and a standard iPhone charger needs 5 volts of direct charge.

So, to caculate the hypothesis, you divide 5 (Volts) by 0.9 (Lemon Charge) = 5.55 lemons, rounding up to 6 lemons.

My hypothesis is that we need 6 lemons to charge the phone.

Research

During my research, I found out that Iphones are charged when electricity is converted from Alternate Current (AC) to Direct Current (DC).

Also, during my observations, 12 lemons can produce DC, (10.47V DC) but not a lot of AC (0.006 AC).

Phones like the new iPhone 15 Pro Max, uses a charger that converts AC to DC.  AC electrons move forward and backwards constantly, while the flow of DC is steady in a single direction. However, we need AC because it starts the process of charging a phone as it is the main power source, plus the fact that our modern houses use AC as its power source, and when you plug your charger into the outlet in those outlet in a wall, the electrons are transferred into the charger block, which changed the dangerous, unstable alternate current into a safe, stable DC current that flnally reaches the phone, the electrons move more steadily into the phone, being easily charged and powered.

How the AC current is transformed into DC through the block in these 4 steps below:

  1. Transformer: The AC voltage from the wall is passed through a transformer, which reduces the voltage to a lower level that is suitable for the phone's battery.
  2. Rectifier: The output of the transformer is now fed into this rectifier in this stage. This is where the AC is converted into a pulsating Direct Current still needs to be smoothed out.
  3. Capacitator: This is used to smoothen out the pulsating DC, in the result of a more constant DC voltage.
  4. Voltage Regulator: The smoothed DC voltage is regulated to the specific required by the phone' battery; it depends on which phone it is. (In this case an iPhone 5) This ensures that the phone receives a steady and safe charging voltage.

In a nutshell, the charger block effectively converts the AC from the wall, tranmforming/converting to DC that is required and the main source of charging a phone after passing through the converter. (You can use AC, but it is unsafe and it could damage your phone.)

Variables

What I changed throughout this project is when the materials required to conduct this experiment, we solder aluminum paper clips to copper wire to make it conductive and can easily be attached/detached to the zinc and copper wires.  The zinc wires are used for the negative charge and the copper wires are used for the positive charge.

Procedure

My procedure is to first push the positive (Copper) and negative (ZInc) into each lemon, then connecting the soldered paper clips to each lemon, then attaching two alligator clips onto the sides that are exposed on the sides of the circuit (One is copper and the opposite side must be zinc) then connecting the full circuit to the negative and positive side of the USB charging block/adapter, which is plugged into a USB cable that transports the electrons to the iPhone.

 

Materials needed:

  • iPhone5
  • USB Cable
  • Lemons
  • Copper wire (To stick in the lemons)
  • Aluminum Paper clips
  • Copper wire (divided)
  • Nails (Zinc)
  • Alligator clips

Observations

As I conducted this experiment, I used a meter to check the voltage DC to determine the power to find how much more lemons we need.

In total of all the lemons, I used 12 lemons (8 straight lemons, 4 mandarin/lemons) to put my observations/voltage of how much lemons in that chart below.

 

# Lemons 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
DC (Direct Current) 0.93 1.89 2.84 3.34 4.02 4.93 5.87 6.78 7.74 8.68 9.56 10.47
AC (Alternate Current) N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A 0.006

 

However, the lemons did not power the output (charger) therefore, the iPhone did not charge.

Analysis

During the analysis, we used 8 straight lemons, and 4 mandarin/lemons to conduct the experiment. As the experiment was conducted, there was plenty of DC, not knowing that the charging block is an AC to DC converter as it is used to safely charge the phone and it is easier to store DC  than AC. However, when it was plugged in to the charger/converter block, connected to a USB 2.0 to the phone, the phone remained idle as no power was getting through.

Conclusion

As a conclusion, it is possible to charge an iPhone 5. However, the procedure of this experiment declines DC to charge the phone as it was found that the charging block is a converter of AC to DC but it doesn't allow DC itself because it electronically shuts down. Therefore, it is impossible to charge a phone only using 6-12 lemons because there is not enough AC. However, there is one way to charge the phone: It is to use AC from the lemons;  and since 12 lemons can produce 0.06 AC, you would probably need at least a thousand lemons for the AC to be converted through the charging block and charge the phone.

Application

Before I conducted this experiment, things that had by the ready was 6 lemons, galvanized nails and regular nails, clipped copper wire, Alligator clips to attach the lemon circuit the charging block that leads to the phone, and about 12 wires that were soldered to aluminum paper clips as paper clips are conductive. First, I pushed in a copper wire and a nail for each lemon. Then, I used a meter that showed the Voltage of DC, AC. (See: Observations)

Sources Of Error

A source of error during this experiment is when we connected the lemon and mandarin/lemons, the DC voltage on the meter kept saying '1' as to the first two lemons were saying '1.89' (Volts DC) Then, we noticed that one of the straight lemons was in between two mandarin/lemons; we put those lemons with all the other straight lemons, and somehow the Voltage in DC said 10.93V DC! How the error was solved it that the dial was pointing at 'DC 2' meaning that the max shown was 2 volts DC. So, I changed it to 'DC 20' which means the max was 20V DC, which the solved the error during the experiment permanently.

Citations

  • World's Largest Lemon Battery - Mark Rober - Youtube - published June 23, 2018 (Click Here for Video)
  • Can You Charge your Phone With Lemons? - DCODE by Discovery - Youtube - published January 19, 2019

(Click Here for Video)

  • How To Make A Lemon Battery | John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth - John Hopkins Center for Talented Youth - Youtube - published August 29th, 2016       (Click Here for Video)

Acknowledgement

Thank you to these people who helped me on this project (Shhh! I did almost all the work) as there were times of struggle that were solved.

I'd like to thank:

  • Mom - Who helped me get the lemons
  • Dad - Who helped me conduct this dangerous experiment
  • The land we gather - Just boosts my confidence in this project in a connective way