Build Your Own Band-aid Fuel Cell

ptorrone writes "Here's how to make a fuel cell from a band-aid...This has got to be the simplest way to build a fuel cell from scratch. The design is ridiculously simple, whilst being effective - it will allow you to explore the concepts of fuel cells in a ludicrously simple way."

Comments

meh

[darkrowan]

Still requires you to buy specialty parts to complete. Sure, its a nifty idea. But so is trying to make a V8 engine out of soda cans. You'd still have to buy some parts to make it work right. Let me know when you can do it from just the store bought items.

Re:meh

[MrFlannel]

Oh, Oh!
I've got one. Take a lemon, a piece of zinc, and a piece of copper...
well, you know the rest.

I know, it's not much. But it's hundreds of times more interesting than this article.

It's like saying "We've used a band aid to hold together this light bulb, battery, and piece of wire. look! we can show you how to make a flashlight out of a band aid!" Quite deceptive indeed.

well, how long does it last?

[the_REAL_sam]

how many watt-hours, at how many volts? and, just as important, is it rechargable?

anyhow, the bandaids were incidental. the "mea" part was $47.50. it's a heck of an expensive battery, even if IS a WONDER battery.

In my grandmother times...

[Vo0k]

Gypsies used a similar trick to get free lunch, they called it "nail soup". Tell the host that you can cook a "nail soup", a soup based on a nail.
Ingredients:
- One big nail
- Water
- Groats
- Bacon
- Salt, Spices, Herbs
- (...some more foodstuffs, I don't remember).

The idea was to cook a basic groats-based soup with nail in it. The nail didn't provide anything to the soup except of curiosity factor that made the host to provide the rest of the ingredients. The gypsy would eat one bowl, the host another, the nail would be saved for another cooking of the soup...

Here they use band-aid instead of the nail.

Re:Simple

[Anonymous Coward]

First get a band-aid. Make sure it has a large sterile pad area.

Remove the backing from the adhesive and set it aside. Next, buy a fuel cell from the online fuel cell store. Then, carefully attach the fuel cell to the adhesive part of the band-aid.

Finally, wave your wand while saying "A-la peanut butter sandwiches", and hey presto! it is done!

Re:Simple technology

[ajs318]

Wood isn't a fossil fuel. It's entirely renewable. Growing trees abstract CO2 from the atmosphere and release oxygen ..... spookily enough, exactly the same amounts of CO2 as you're going to produce and O2 as you're going to consume when you burn that wood. You were taught why in your third year chemistry classes. All the energy stored in the chemical bonds in plant matter originally came from the sun. As long as you plant enough trees, accounting for infant mortality, to replace the ones you are using up {which is not rocket science, just simple forestry management}, then you have a closed cycle. {Note that maintenance and harvesting require energy which is not released in burning, but there's no reason for this energy not to be sourced from renewables}. A tree being grown for energy should be harvested as soon as possible after its growth slows down, since beyond this point you are adding fewer kg. of wood, and hence MWh of energy, per day that passes. This is no different to killing a chicken for meat when its egg production slows down. Both come under the general heading of husbandry.

Where there is private ownership of land coupled with a high population density, there is an automatic incentive to make every square metre of land work for its keep. Poor forestry managers don't last long in that sort of climate; they invariably run out of money and get their business taken over by someone who can do the job properly. Basically what is happening is that the monetary value of the product is closely tracking the non-monetary value. The main failing of Capitalism as it is practised today is that it only takes notice of the monetary value of goods; but when non-monetary value is directly related to monetary value, then capitalism works.

Non-renewable energy appears cheap, because we're effectively stealing it from succeeding generations. The point will come eventually when it will cost more than renewable energy and that is when the world will have no option but to switch. The damage done by non-renewables is probably reversible, but that won't be anything like an instantaneous process.

I sometimes wonder if the answer to half the world's problems would not be to peg the world's currencies against the megawatt-hour, rather than the value of someting capricious like silver or gold. The price of crude oil being tied to the US dollar doesn't count: that is just as capricious, and the USA has a nasty tendency to invade countries who mention pricing their oil by the Euro.

Re:Simple

[Professor_UNIX]

Hah! That's what I was thinking when I read that. Build your own nuclear reactor using a band-aid. Strap band-aid to functioning nuclear reactor procured from post-Cold War Russia. Voila, Band-Aid Nuclear Fission Reaction System.

From the Editor?

[derubergeek]

It would appear that the submitter of the story is Phillip Torrone, the host of the MAKE blog (and apparently a Senior Editor?). I'd like to think that's not really the case: MAKE is really cool and this fuel cell is really lame. The worst part is that now I have that stupid "I am stuck on Band-Aid brand, 'cause Band-Aid's stuck on me" jingle running through my head.