UPDATE: 31st March 2011 In hard times, humour is often all we have to lift our spirits. Given the current situation in Japan regarding the state of their nuclear power stations following the tragic and devastating earthquake and tsunami, a twitter follower, Christophe Shiffert thought this electric sweet potato funny enough to tweet about it and to allude to the constantly unfolding tragedy that is humanity’s failure to address the problem of energy in more creative and sustainable ways.
In this week’s video, MIT’s Walter Lewin demonstrates how to produce 10 to 15000 volts of electricity using a couple of empty paint cans, a bucket of water, some wire, and two balls. The question is how does this work and could you use it like the potato powered mp3 player?
I’ll look forward to seeing your suggestions in the comments and will post a more detailed explanation the the answers tomorrow.