WHY I REMOVED MY LEMON POWERED CAR VIDEO
1,548 views · Published 18 June 2014 · 1:40 · Indexed 4 November 2026
Channel: GrandadIsAnOldMan · 2014 · Science & Technology
Sorry guys, I am having trouble replicating my own results. I am not sure what is going wrong and I am chasing several misleading trails. I leave the car for about 8 hours after each change so it is taking a long time to prove the results so to be safe I temporarily removed the video. The two main items I have looked at (More than once each time which is taking so much time). Lemon electrolyte losing strength - tried different lemon Zinc coating on the nails has corroded - new nails I haven't tried changing the battery as I am worried a new one may give me a false result if it restores itself. Details of the original video. The set-up was a lemon, some copper wire, and some bright zinc nails. I use the charger circuit board from a solar garden ornament and simply replaced the solar cell with the lemon battery. All appeared to work well, the LED on the circuit board went out to indicate that charge was flowing into the battery and when I tried the car the following morning after about 8 hours of charge the car ran for about 3.5 metres. The car is one I made using the electric motor from a fluttering solar butterfly ornament and the car runs directly off the solar cell in reasonable sunlight. I now have the motor connected directly across the rechargeable battery via a simple on/off switch. The theory is the lemon battery charges the rechargeable battery and then I throw the switch and the battery is discharged through the motor. What is throwing a spanner in the works is the fact that the rechargeable battery restores some charge on it's own so I cannot tell if the charge has come from the lemon or has occurred "naturally". I did not expect the set-up to work as I didn't expect the lemon to have either the voltage or the current and was surprised when it seemed to work. The lemon powered car project has really frustrated me. What I am trying to explain here is that I need to understand why it worked the first time because I really didn't expect it to and I cannot replicate it, so clearly it was not doing what I thought it was doing. A clear case of me misinterpreting the results. The battery on the car does not have any visible information on it, but all the others I have from these types of solar lights are Ni-Mh. It charges to about 1.8v and drops to about 1.03 then restores to about 1.2 on it's own. The lemon gives about 0.86 volts when fresh and the zinc and copper rods are clean. I am not confident with my current measurements so I will not show them. So on the face of it the figures cannot add up but I was hoping the little bit of circuitry on the solar charger was going to do some magic and provide a low charge to make it work. That is why I have been leaving it for 8 hours between each test and why the project is taking so long to prove. Hey Grandad can you make a Lemon powered car? https://youtu.be/5Zyv_LmS4fM The results of this project are very misleading. To try to make sense of what is going on please watch this video too. Do rechargeable batteries recharge themselves? https://youtu.be/9m0NzyVPmcw Here is a selection of related playlists Lemon, Potato, Vinegar, Salt etc Power https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA5a2xPRSrB24tJDQHdmjgpFGwfvwvnnn Potato Power revisited https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA5a2xPRSrB0obLfnK22P9pTmLKXvQxsm Solar Projects playlist https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA5a2xPRSrB1SVLRn_D16dRvTrocMhFPq Smart Science 6 in 1 Solar Robot kit https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA5a2xPRSrB0nHCTZzIbtOdqUSsEEJ1Nr Electric Experiments Roobert33 https://youtu.be/Ko_R3PeadG4?list=PLA5a2xPRSrB24tJDQHdmjgpFGwfvwvnnn Merchandise RedBubble https://rdbl.co/2yJv56H Direct http://grandadisanoldman.cottoncart.com/ Teespring https://grandadisanoldman.creator-spring.com/ My Channels GrandadIsAnOldMan https://youtube.com/@GrandadIsAnOldMan GrandadsOtherChannel https://youtube.com/@GrandadsOtherChannel Put a rubber band on it https://youtube.com/@Putarubberbandonit Number4 https://youtube.com/@Number4GIAOM You can help keep my channel running with coffee and cakes at Kofi https://ko-fi.com/grandadisanoldman Thingiverse https://www.thingiverse.com/grandadisanoldman Tinkercad https://www.tinkercad.com/users/fqjxiYyhfjE Cults https://cults3d.com/en/users/GrandadIsAnOldMan I have thousands of videos on YouTube, to find one try my search guides https://youtu.be/ceBSOoOHcgw or https://youtu.be/Zj4UgwkwYRk I am happy for you to show my content as part of your projects or in public settings, as long as you clearly credit GrandadIsAnOldMan. Please do not copy my video content and pass it off as your own. #grandadisanoldman #lemon #power #car
