How to Make a light bulb from a pickle

In this Education video tutorial you will learn how to make a light bulb from a pickle. Pickles are high in ions in the form of acids and salts. These are electrolytes and they will transfer energy through the pickle. Place a pickle on a glass plate and hook it up with an AC power cord with a nail on each end as shown in the video. You must have protective gloves on. Poke the nails on each end of the pickle and hook up the cord to the power source. The pickle will start emitting light which is actually a yellow sodium spectrum from the sodium chloride, which is the salt.

1 Comment

WonderHowTo, I liked the post. I would have never thought of using a pickle to make light. I will have to try this and see how well it works. I have tried making light with batteries and lead from pencils. I used .7 lead and I worked incredibly well. I actually got it to produce at least 600 lumens or so of light, once I got it to this strength, the lead split in half almost instantaneous. I also made the terrible choice of dong this on my outside rug/ mat so when it broke, the lead fell and burnt huge hole in my floor. If you decide to do this experiment, make sure you also use copper wire, it is the best type of wire to use. Well, anyways, good job on the post and I look forward to testing this.

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