pear powered flower arrangments: d.eco-system

Notes from a session held at the Luminous Green Hands-On Workshop, 3rd of May 2007

Carole and Bart

• pears, lemons, tomatoes, tulipes, amarylis, renoncule, cactus.

• plates, bowls, mixer, florist foam, crocodile clips, coper coins, zinc plates, LED, PH paper

• make juices from pears, lemons, tomatoes, tulipes and amarylis.
• mesure and record the ph levels of each ingredients:
  • tomato: 3
  • pear: 4
  • rachel: 8
  • tulipe: 5
  • lemon: 3

this is just for info so that we know at what acidic level we are most effective.

• make a tilt switch with an amarylis and pear juice:
• fill the amarylis stem (naturally hollow) with pear juice and “close” the stem with a bit of clingfilm. plug in a copper tube at the bottom of the stem and a zinc plate near the top. remove a bit of juice so that the part of the stem between the zinc and the coper if not completely full.
• when you hold the amarylis in a horizontal way, the currrent flows through it, but when you tilt it vertical it disconnects.

• 2 serial circuits tulipe bouquet connected in a parralel circuit.
• We tested 1 tulipe which gave 0.46 V. Based on that test, we connected 2 x 5 tulipes in a parallel circuit and achieved 1.94V. however only 0.02 A… so a lot of fidling for not much result. Patrik suggested to change the mollecular structure of the tulipe, i.e: blend it into a juice state.

with this liquid tulipe we achived 2×3 tulipes parallel circuits whcih powered an LED for a few hours.

• however there was a crucial fudge factor: we mixed the tulipe with some pear juice to help the blending process, thus the conductive potential…..

the final product was a very poetic electronic tulipe “candle”.

• Throughout the afternoon some people expressed concerns about food wastage and this made me think a lot more about the why and the how of the experiment. What surprised me most was the actual amount of raw materials needed to power 1 LED. Globally, an average of 25% of the world population exploits inefficiently 80% of the world ressource. I think this “d.eco-system” experiment could be explored further as a way to create a visual analogy of our wasteful ways of lives.
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