You’ve probably seen a light powered by a lemon or a clock hooked up to a potato before, but a group in London recently built a similar device using a much smaller, less popular piece of produce. To promote The Big Bang UK Young Scientists & Engineers Fair, a team of designers built the world’s first Brussels sprout-powered battery and hooked it up to a set of Christmas tree lights.
The battery itself is comprised of five power cells, which are modeled after the appearance of natural Brussels sprouts stalks. Each cell is surrounded by 200 sprouts for a grand total of 1,000 Brussels sprouts in the whole battery. The sprouts are each mounted onto copper and zinc electrodes, which triggers a chemical reaction between the electrolytes in each sprout and produces a small current. A capacitor collects and stores the energy from all the sprouts before releasing it to the tree’s lights. A digital display on top of the battery also shows how much voltage it is producing in real-time.
London Christmas tree powered by a Brussels sprout battery [Gizmag]