Prizes £250, £150 and £200 book tokens for the best cartoon and design!

A power source using A cartoon to illustrate household items an electrochemical principle

Please submit all entries by 15th Dec 2012 to:

IYC Electrochemistry Competition

c/o Upul Wijayantha Department of Chemistry Loughborough University Loughborough LE11 3TU, UK

International year of chemistry – Electrochemistry competition

(1) Draw a cartoon that illustrates an electrochemical principle

Using your imagination, construct a cartoon or illustration that demonstrates an electrochemical principle. Creativity is important here, think different!

(2) Can you design a power source using items found in a typical household?

Example 1: battery – A lemon battery is traditionally used as an example of a simple power source, as shown in video found at http://www.rsc.org/membership/networking/interestgroups/electrochemistry/

A coin and a nail are inserted into a lemon and act as the positive and negative respectively. The lemon acts as a conducting medium as it contains . As the acid in the lemon can dissolve some of the metal in the electrodes to form ions the following reactions take place at the electrodes:

Negative : Zn ↔ Zn 2+ + 2e -

Positive electrode: Cu 2+ + 2e - ↔ Cu

There are plenty of variations to the lemon battery – for example people have used a potato instead of a lemon. The electrodes do not have to be copper and zinc – what other metals could you use as electrodes? The and current produced will depend on the size of the two electrodes, the metals you use and the conducting medium.

Example 2: Volta Pile – In 1800, Volta stacked pairs of alternating copper and zinc discs separated by cloth soaked in brine. When the top and bottom discs were connected by a wire, an flowed through the and the connecting wire. It’s easy to reproduce this experiment using coins as shown in http://www.rsc.org/membership/networking/interestgroups/electrochemistry/

Example 3: Solar cell – Energy can be harnessed from sunlight using a variety of materials available in the home. The RSC has promoted this fact previous via a workshop, full details of which can be found at www.rsc.org/images/RSCrenewable_tcm18- 159226.pdf .

Can you think of an alternative to the lemon battery, a different way to create a voltaic pile, or alternative materials for use in solar cells? There are no limits to what you can use, as long as it can be found around your home and garden!

In this challenge we are looking for the most imaginative solution. Imagine you had a power cut at home – what could you use to produce some power? You don’t need to construct the device yourself (though you can if you want to) but send us a description and sketch of your idea along with an explanation of how you think it would work and why it’s such a great idea!

Good luck.