How does a potato create enough energy to turn on digital clock?

Question

How does a potato create enough energy to turn on digital clock?

Answer 1

Not if it's a COUCH potato.

I triple-dog-dare you to write that on your homework. (:

Answer 2

It is not the potato that creates the energy. It is the dissolution of the zinc metal in the galvanized wire that creates the energy. The potato just provides the aqueous conducting medium to form the cell.

Answer 3

A battery (more technically a 'cell') is made up of two electrodes, pieces of two different metals, connected by a conductive material called an electrolyte.  

Salt water works as an electrolyte, and we used to make small batteries when I was a kid by stacking up pennies, dimes, and pieces of filter paper soaked in salt water (this is in the old days when pennies were copper and dimes were silver).  With five or six of each you could get a shock!

So you stick little slivers of copper and zinc (or any two different metals) into the potato and apparently there is enough conductivity in the juice of the potato to create a tiny current, enough to power a digital clock (which doesn't take much!  A battery the size of an aspirn will power a digital watch for more than a year!)

Answer 4

it can't. but if you stick 2 different metals into it you can get a charge because electrons will flow from one metal to the other. the potato is needed to complete the circuit.