Did it work ? yes,but no,but yes.

Did it work ?

Well yes: the tomatoes produced enough electricity to make a little toy 'sing'.
Well not exactly:  It was verrry quied and verry slow. (and only lasted for 2 day's)

What happend?
I think that it did not work optimaal for two main reasons:
1) There was a lot of electricity los due to the way the thin copper wires where connected to the galvenised nail and the copper nail. There was a lot of twisting, turning, touching.
2) I probabely made a mistakes in the connection somewhere.


Now that i know this, i could try it again and avoid these mistakes. 
Right ;-)

Abracadabra. Up in the air and wired.

There they are, up and ready to make electricity.

safety issues

Testing the net and the cables.
The construction  collapsed twice, mayby i should have done this a bit sooner.

an impressionable amount of tomatoes

 120 kilo to be exact.

two hundred and forty meters

Collecting and cutting up 240 meter of thin copper wire and 40 meter of thicker wire. (to replace the penny). Aux travaille !

inside the tomato

This is how the copper pennies and the gavanized nails look like after beeing inside the tomato for about a week.

Bying tomatoes

Voila! I orderd 800 (bio) tomatoes today.
Here the are growing slowly, unaware of the big job that awaits.

FIFTEEN THOUSAND !

I'l need 15.000 tomatoes ! Woeha ha ha. LOL
That is a lot. No really.

I kind of knew that was coming: this is massive.

The multimeter in itself is a challenge to.

It took me ages to find out what 200mA written on the meter is.  It is the maximum  Amps  he'll measures in that position. Ha ! The same with Volts, and with Ohms.
So this is what i measured myself :

I was'nt able to measure the resistance ;-)

ohms ?

Volt

Amperes (10 tomatoes in paralel)

1 tomato = 1 volt  (if you leave it still for a bit, if not it's not stable)
10 tomatoes in paralel = 0,14 mA  (Afther a few readings and adjustments)

I decided that i was going to keep the math verry simple.
The resistors are all the same: tomato's.

Watt= Volt x Ampere
Ampere= Volt/Ohms


10 tomatoes in paralell = 0,14 mA
= 0,0014 A

1,2 Volt x 0,0014 Amps = 0,00168 Watt (30 tomatoes)
1 tomato = 0,000056 Watt

The appliance i wanted to use needs 0,84 Watt. That is: 15000 tomatoes !

That leaves only 1 conclusion: time for plan B.

Trying to measure OHMS

But failing. This is clearly not the way to do it. (but it looks nice)
Because measuring amperes turns out to be kind of tricky.
I'm going to try to find them out in another way. By trying to find out the recistance.
So i can use I=V/R  formula.

I need to find a way to calculate aproximatelly how many tomatoes i'll need.
And yes it is still a tomato. Green, small, large doesn't make a difference aparentely.

Mister multimeter: what are you telling me ?

What option should i use ( 200u, 2000u, 20m, 200m) if i use 20 on the voltage and i want to use the formula W=VxA ?
It seems to me that the measuring in itselfs alters the numbers. The brightness of the LED changes.
What is happening here ? How can i measure amperes ?

1/ LED hooked up to a battery. Multimeter placed in series to measure the current. (the LED seems to light up but this is reflection)

2/ I turn the multimeter to 200m, the LED lights up very brightly. On the display: 03,8

3/ Multimeter is turned to 20m, the LED lights up. On the display: 3,29

4/ Multimeter is turned to 2000u, the LED lights up. On the display: 1197

5/ Multimeter is turned to 200u, the LED lights up but not verry strong. On the display 1  .

electrical lay-out

Could this work ?
Tree tomatoes in serie generate aproximately 1,5 V.  I don't know how much current they can generate. Up till now i was unable to messure the amperes. But this is the general idea.

concept

I would like to make an electrical device working using the chemo-electro power of tomatoes. That is the lemon battery principal but than using tomatoes

I live in a rather cold climate and there are no lemons growing about. Tomato is the next best thing: it is verry sour and jucy. ( and can be transformed into tomatosauce later on.)

I'm doing all kind off experiments at the moment. I plan to put them on this blog.  

That is the reasen why it is in English, and i know, my English  is not exactically up to scratch. I do appologize.

This is my graduation project. I have a very strikt deadline: 16 june 2012. No time for protocol.

Vamonos.