Intrigued Londoners looked on today as a mobile phone was charged by a strange contraption made of 800 apples and potatoes connected with nails and copper wire. <br /> <br />Intrigued Londoners looked on today as a smartphone's battery was charged by a strange contraption made of 800 apples and potatoes connected with hundreds of nails and lengths of copper wire. <br />The art installation was created outside the Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd’s Bush, essentially just a large-scale version of the classroom science experiment where a single potato is used to power a digital clock. <br />By stringing 800 pieces of fruit and vegetables together with galvanized nails and wire, artist Caleb Charland was able to scale-up the power output so much that it could charge a mobile phone – in this case a Nokia Lumia 930, charged via a wireless mat. <br />The hand-built circuit created an electrical current of an average 20mA and around six volts.
