Turn your change into a battery

It is possible to generate electricity with coins. Here’s how. A handy skill if you need to McGyveren a battery together for whatever reason. You always have small change with you.

How do batteries work?

The principle works because electrical voltages arise between different metals. The more base metal, for example zinc or aluminum, dissolves. The more precious metal, such as copper or gold, precipitates. The electrons from the piece of base metal flow to the piece of precious metal, causing current to flow.

The batteries you buy at the store work this way. Because our coins contain different types of metal, you can use this effect to generate a little electricity.

Five cent pieces

For example, you can build a battery of copper five cent coins and nickel coins, such as old guilders or American nickels and dimes. Do you have any aluminum or zinc coins left over from a holiday in a country with a rather generous central bank? Then everything goes like clockwork, because the potential difference between these metals and copper is even greater. You could also use small pieces of aluminum foil, aluminum sheet, or zinc sheet. Do not use lead. This is very toxic.

Electrically conductive solution and damp pieces of paper

To make this experiment work you need an electrically conductive solution, for example a mixture of vinegar and salt. You will also need pieces of cardboard or folded paper soaked in this solution that are large enough to keep the coins apart.

Identical stacks of two coins, separated by damp paper

The basic unit of your battery consists of two coins of different metals stacked on top of each other, for example a copper coin lying on top of a nickel coin. For most practical applications you want at least 3-5 volts. So you have to stack different units (cells) on top of each other.

Always place a piece of damp paper between the units. So for example: nickel-copper-paper-nickel-copper-paper-nickel-copper. It is important to always keep this exact order, otherwise the units will work against each other and the power will be lost.

The oldest modern battery

You now get a kind of column. This construction is called Volta’s column and is the oldest modern battery. This battery was invented in 1800 and remained in use until the end of the 19th century. If you now connect the bottom and the top with wires, for example with an LED, and you have used suitable coins, you can let it burn.

Bell that has been ringing for nearly two centuries

In a physics lab at the University of Oxford, there is a Volta column from the year 1840. It rings a bell. Leave. Because even after almost two centuries, this column is still not exhausted. Scientists are still guessing about what materials were used for this mysterious column. We will only get an answer to that when the column stops working, this experiment has officially ended and they can take it apart.

Because earlier generations of researchers grew tired of the enormous noise of the electric bell, they placed it in a flask and evacuated it. And there, inaudibly, the bell has been rattling tirelessly for nearly two centuries…