As the video from the HouseholdHacker shows, after soaking an onion in Gatorade for 30 minutes, he literally just plugs his iPod USB cord directly into the onion and hey presto – the iPod appears to start charging.
However, there has been much debate online as to whether this is genuinely possible, or whether it’s simply a hoax. Several of the Digg community claim the video is a fake, however some of the commenters on tuaw.com – The Unofficial Apple Weblog believe that the iPod is genuinely being charged, but at the expense of the metals in the contacts of the USB plug. Commenter “scb” says:
“The onion is probably acidic enough to overcome the corrosion barrier on the stainless steel, and the iron just corrodes, generating electrons that are consumed by oxygen reduction on the gold. But first those electrons go through the iPod.”
However “Dean Baird” believes the video to be a spoof:
“These guys are preying on your recollections of potato batteries. [There are] no dissimilar metals in the USB terminals. A simple battery requires two metals with different electro-negativities to work.”
Suspicions have also been raised regarding the fact that the charging cord is curled and slightly out of shot in the video, suggesting that the iPod is actually being charged from a completely different source.
So, if it is possible at all, it might well come at the expense of your USB cable, and according to TreeHugger this type of circuit is called a “corrosion cell”, and the worst case scenario would be that your USB cord would no longer function after its onion experience.
So how many onions does it take to charge an iPod? Well, if genuinely possible at all, each onion provides about 20 minutes of charge, and the average iPod takes about an hour to reach full charge, so that’s four onions. But until someone else has the balls to risk their iPod’s precious metals and try it themselves, the debate over this vegetable source of power will continue.
No related posts.
