I’ve wondered this occasionally over the years, but never got it working.

I tried just putting a dried piece of chicken bone pressed between two plates (mild compressive stress perpendicular to the bone), and using an inverter just like I would use a crystal. It did not work. Maybe I need a really thin segment?

I have no practical application in mind. I might make a CPU from it for Halloween I guess?

I’m not sure if I would classify it as electronics or necromancy, but I thought it was an interesting question to ask here :)

  • @snaptastic@beehaw.orgEnglish
    4•1 year ago

    You madlad, I don’t have much to add but this would be pretty interesting if it worked. Presumably uncooked bone? I also think that using a very thin slice would increase the strength of the electric field, since you want to have a small gap between the plates (field strength is volts per meter). Does the orientation of the bone matter? Could you ask a butcher to cut a slice from a large beef bone?

    Edit: Also what voltage are you using?

    • @Saigonauticon@voltage.vnOPEnglish
      3•1 year ago

      I tried with cooked bone, that tends to be what I have more of lying around :D

      I don’t recall the voltage I tried, but it was probably something in the range of 5-9v. I didn’t try with a very thin slice, it was a few mm thick. Probably a thinner slice is the thing to try. That’s a bit hard with bird bones (hollow), so maybe I’ll have to cook something else. I don’t have a microtome, so I’ll have to cut some thin slices by trial and error.

      I would hazard a bet that orientation matters. The studies that measured bone piezoelectricity seemed to suggest some orientations made more sense than others, but I don’t recall what exactly. In any case, they had… very different applications in mind.