The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the largest particle collider in the world and a feat of engineering. Over the past few decades, it has confirmed the existence of the Higgs Boson, expanded our understanding of particle physics, and served as a pivotal setting and plot point in Dan Brown’s bestselling novel, Angels and Demons. This colossal facility consists of a tunnel 17 miles in diameter and has the ability to accelerate subatomic particles almost to the speed of light. In the face of such majesty and might, one cannot help but to ask, “what if I were to build a lemon battery powered version of the same thing?”
It’s a mystery that no one thought was a mystery and doesn’t really need solving, but damn if it isn’t gonna get solved anyway. So off we go.
The typical lemon has, according to Wikipedia, a voltage of 0.9 V. This can change depending on the type of metals used as electrodes in the lemon, but it will serve as a good jumping off point. The current produced by a lemon battery can range up to 1mA, or 0.001A. Since power is the product of current and voltage (power = current x voltage), this means that the average lemon battery produces 0.0009 Watts of power.
The LHC, on the other hand, consumes 200 megawatts of power during the summer, which is the facility’s peak energy consumption period. So this means that fully powering the LHC would require the power generated by 222,222,222,222 (twelve two’s) individual lemon powered batteries. By wiring all the lemon batteries together in series, their individual voltages would add up, thus combining all two hundred billion plus lemons into one big citrus monstrosity.
Assuming that 90 percent of the power from each battery is preserved, we would need at least an extra 10 percent to ensure that our collider can run smoothly. In addition, we must account for potential failures, bringing our lemon total to around 250 billion, comparable to the number of stars in our galaxy (200-400 billion).
But suppose you are very, very determined, what does it mean to procure two hundred and fifty billion lemons? According to the FDA, 15.2 billion metric tons of lemons were produced in 2013 worldwide. Assuming each lemon weighs about three to four ounces (~100 grams), 250 billion lemons would only account for less than 0.2 percent of the annual worldwide crop of lemons. While inconvenient and costly, it is theoretically feasible to gather that many lemons in one place.
So if anyone is determined to win that first place ribbon at the next science fair, but struggling to find a good project, look no further than the lemon-powered particle accelerator. Sure it might be highly impractical, especially since this calculation is focused just on the lemons, and not on any of the logistics of actually building an accelerator. But rest assured that it sure beats another damn baking soda volcano, even though you might have a hard time fitting it into the school gymnasium.
