Sixth Grade Science Fair Projects is not all games anymore. Most sixth graders have developed interest to science and want to do more challenging science fair project. But don’t forget the fun aspect of the experiment to keep the students engaged. Fruit Battery experiment will be perfect for sixth grade science projects. The children are old enough to handle sharp objects and electricity. It also will be cool to know that many fruits they are familiar with can actually produce electricity.
Materials
1. Various kind of fruits: lemon, orange, apple, grape fruit, passion fruit. You can test any kind of fruit you want.
2. Light bulb
3. Copper nail
4. Zinc nail
5. Alligator clippers
6. Tape
7. Digital multimeter. This is optional. If you want to check how much power a fruit can generate, you can use this. If you only want to see if the light bulb will light or not, this thing won’t be necessary.
Procedure
1. Squeeze the fruit gently. Do it carefully so the fruit won’t break. We want the juice to flow inside the fruit
2. Remove the insulation of the light bulb until the wire insides are exposed.
3. Roll the wire around the nails.
4. Stick the nails on your fruit but don’t let the nails meet. The nails must be in the center of the fruit and be careful not to let the nails come out from the other side.
5. Clip the wires with the alligator clips to prevent it from unrolling from the nails.
6. After you stick both nails, the bulb will light.
7. If you want to know which fruit has the most power, clip the multimeter cables to both nails. The digital multimeter will show how many volts each fruit generates.
Conclusion
From this experiment, the students will see that fruits with most acid will generate more power. This is because the fruit is the source of positive ions. The zinc nail which contains negative ions reacts to the acid. This transfer of electron process makes it possible for this simple electricity kit to flow electricity energy to the light bulb. This science project is really interesting. It definitely will trigger the curiosity of the students.
After the experiment, don’t forget to ask some interesting discussion question, such as why don’t we use fruit as a source of energy instead of the unrenewable fossils energy. It will boost their critical thinking and develop further interest of this particular sixth grade science fair projects.