While I was digging around around among my boxes of crap looking for hardware, I found a whole bunch of things I havent seen in a while. Oh Seredipity, sister to Muse...

This is one of those things. I made some batteries accidentally but I dont have the equipment to test and reverse engineer what I've built, so I'm guessing. Well I found the original test pieces that are now over three years old and are still performing as they did when built.

Being as I cant print yet, having lost a motherboard to my nemesis Lady Fate, I decided to test them again.

These are the test pieces. As you can see, really simple. Just a layer of silicone flue sealant and another on top with graphite added, smeared on a piece of lead. The lead is oxidised to hell, this bit came off a roof and was scavenged from a pile of rubble that used to keep one away from the ground.

Yep, still reads half a volt. Thats not electrolysis, it would have dried up a *long* time ago.

Similarly with the other one. The copper and aluminium test pieces are as good as dead, only marginally above the flutter you get on a test meter anyway. I havent shown them but they are pretty much the same as these ones otherwise.

Knowing lead, that shouldn't work but it does. You need to poke the oxidised surface quite hard to get a clear reading with the probe, so the silicon crystal is definitely doing something to it in contact. The reverse side in contact with the lower one is not cleaned up.