Charge your I-Pod with an onion?

Tuesday, November 25, 2008

A little humor from a story by Andrew Williams on CleanTechnica.com:

Music fan Owen Louis was so concerned about the amount of energy used up by his iPod, that he figured out a way of charging it up … with nothing more than an onion.

Louis, 21, from Portsmouth in the UK, makes two holes in an onion, before soaking it in an everyday energy drink and connecting it to his MP3 via a standard USB cable. Incredibly, the technique (video) enables him to charge his iPod for a full hour. According to Louis, “A friend showed me the experiment as a laugh but I thought it was the greatest thing I have ever seen, and do it religiously every day.”

Various responses to the article raised a number of issues about the onion charger:

Umm, I’m pretty sure this is a hoax.

And another response:

…the only other problem is that it uses far more energy to create the energy drink and grow the onion than you get out of it to charge your iPod. Interesting experiment, though, that I have seen many times.