Power in a Pinch: The Onion Gatorade Trick

There is an extremely popular video going around the interweb from someone called the Household Hacker showing you how you can charge your iPod using only an Onion that has been soaked in Gatorade for for 30 minutes.

The idea behind it is that the onion's cells are filled with electrolytes from the Gatorade that can give a charge to the iPod, and keep it charging for up to 20 minutes.

Here are the materials you will need to try this experiment:

1. 1 onion
2. 2 cups of Gatorade (or other electrolyte sports drink)
3. Screwdriver
4. iPod and USB cable

Once you have your materials, poke a deep hole on either side of the onion using your screwdriver. This will allow the liquid to fill the onion quicker.

After the holes are poked in the onion, you now want to submerge it in your Gatorade for 30 minutes. Make sure the holes are completely submerged.

After 30 minutes, take the onion out of the gatorade bath, and dry off the excess liquid from the outside. Once the outside is dry, place it on a steady surface, and plug your iPod USB cable in. After a few seconds the screen should light up and the iPod should start charging. If everything was done correctly, you should be able to charge it for 20 minutes.

Here is the video from The Household Hacker:



It is important to note that I haven't tried this out for myself. I do have a classmate in College though that swears that he tried this last Saturday and it worked. I did find this article on about.com that says this is a hoax: (Onion Power Hoax).

Have you tried it? Let me know if it works or not. Hit me up in the comments.

Posted in: battery, experiment, gatorade, hack, ipod, ipod with onion and electrolytes, macgyver, mod, onion