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Science Note: Electric Pickle [1]

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Date: 2022-07-06

Electric Pickle

A fun little experiment. Take a short length of appliance cord with a two prong plug on one end. Separate a few inches of the two wires and strip their ends at the other. You now have what engineers call a suicide cord. Take a dill pickle and stick two small 8d or lesser nails in the ends so they don’t touch. Wrap the bare part of each conductor around one. Put the pickle on a ceramic or plastic plate.

Plug it in! The pickle will flash and glow as the sodium atoms in the brine are excited by the current. No one knows why one end glows, if you want to do publishable science, find out. This is accompanied by wisps of steam and satisfying zapping sounds. At this point you should totally ham it up and say something like “Its-its, ALIVE bwahhaha!” You can also cook a hotdog this way—not even a call from the governor can save it. Your friends will be amazed, even shocked.

Speaking of which, don’t touch the live conductors or you will find out why its called a suicide cord.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/6/2108227/-Science-Note-Electric-Pickle

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