Lettuce based wires - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / projects

author: mrkva
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 19, 2014, 09:27:59 am
content: Friend have sent me this article. Seems full of weird inaccuracies. What do you guys think?http://www.livescience.com/43450-lettuce-based-wires-created.html

author: Richard Head
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 19, 2014, 11:10:16 am
content: Bullshit research

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 19, 2014, 11:29:50 am
content: Its quite suspicious that they dont say what kind of current they used during there measurements, i mean driving 100uA through 1cm of wet plant material could be said to look like a perfect conductor if you only reported the voltage drop,if i get the chance just to test it, i may take my multimeter to my passhion-fruit to work out a rough resistance per cm tomorrow morningBasil too!too bad i dont have any plants i hate, i've got a 1KV megger that could tell us insulation breakdown resistance of 2 neighbouring plants,

author: mrkva
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 19, 2014, 11:49:15 am
content: Quote from: Rerouter on February 19, 2014, 11:29:50 amgood oneto me it seems like the "researcher" has quite bad understanding of high-school physics.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 19, 2014, 12:37:14 pm
content: "Computer scientist Andrew Adamatzky of the University of West England did a series of tests with four-day-old lettuce seedlings."......"Computer scientist" I dont have any more questions.No actually, who let them do anything important? What will be the cut-off frequency of this chemistry based wire? 0.01HZ?They already admit that the conduction losses were like 20%.Cannot they just wire the money to my account and I will generate for them "results" every now and than that "wood doesnt conduct electricity", two months later "my coffe is a bad conductor"

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 19, 2014, 12:49:39 pm
content: Quote from: mrkva on February 19, 2014, 09:27:59 am

author: andtfoot
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 19, 2014, 02:05:49 pm
content: Reminds me of this thread over at diyAudio:www.diyaudio.com/forums/everything-else/236248-fancy-interconnects-how-about-potato-even-mud.htmlOne of the guys there set up a test using copper, potatoes, bananas and mud as audio cable...

author: Rerouter
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 19, 2014, 07:41:01 pm
content: And the results are in,Passhionfruit vine (very well watered) : 15K per CMBasil Shrub (poorly watered) : 22K per CMParsley (living as a succulent) : 150K per CM,measured by taking a knife to cut 2 small nicks into the sides of the stems then measuring across a distance of 1cm about 10cm off the ground, all growth was under 1 month old and very greenwhich means he was actually driving his circuit with something around a few hundred uA

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 19, 2014, 07:49:59 pm
content: I have found that creeping vines fail on an electric fence, but are quite happy to climb and creep along bare uninsulated mains distribution wiring up a pole. Seems that they really like 400VAC 3 phase power, but really dislike 10kV pulses.Same for gecko's, there were two doing a fun thing when the one tail got too close, and he went out with a bang.

author: liquibyte
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: February 19, 2014, 08:18:20 pm
content: Quote from: SeanB on February 19, 2014, 07:49:59 pmThat is a visual I won't soon forget. I wish I could have that made into a t-shirt.

author: uwezi
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 19, 2014, 09:46:52 pm
content: I cannot find where it says in the article that the lettuce is even supposed to be good conductor - apart from the first sentence of the intro. Have you actually read this paragraph:QuoteWell, I guess we all call this notoutput potential as function of input potentialor even worseamount of energy produced relative to energy put in(which by the way would beefficiency). No, we call this what it is: voltage drop.Another thought about the magnitude of currents which is all over the media everywhere is this magic nanoscale chicken-net, calledgraphene. It is said to be an increadibly good conductor with the lowest possible resistivity- only short to real superconductors.Well, yes and no.Graphene has indeed a very low resistivity or specific resistance - but this is only true for real graphene, single sheets of carbon atoms just an atom high. The macroscopic (i.e. real world) currents however, which you can possibly transport in a sheet of graphene are as minuscule as the graphene is thin. The macroscopic resistanceof graphene is actually quite high, since current can hardly pass from sheet to sheet...

author: xuio
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: February 19, 2014, 10:00:09 pm
content: Quote from: andtfoot on February 19, 2014, 02:05:49 pm-> "For coax, you could thread spaghetti through macaroni. What to use for insulation though? " - LOL

author: uwezi
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: February 19, 2014, 10:12:19 pm
content: Quote from: xuio on February 19, 2014, 10:00:09 pmA double-layer of graphene?

author: calexanian
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2014, 06:07:21 am
content: Hmmm... Conduction of various salad dressings.... Now there is a noble area of research!

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 21, 2014, 06:09:43 am
content: Its never about vegetable or electronics, its the grant "money" from the fools that they're aiming, beside they have nothing to loose from trying, growing few veggies in box + DMMs, how much would that cost ?