'Toy Story' Inspires Award-Winning Science Project

Think cartoons are detrimental to kids’ academic achievement? Buzz Lightyear and 9-year-old Adam Pikulski of Wildomar don’t.

Adam is like a lot of fourth-grade boys. He loves his dogs (“especially the white one”), gets into an occasional tumble with his little brother, plays video games and watches cartoons.

So when his teacher at Donald Graham Elementary announced during class that each student had to come up with a project for the school’s science fair, Adam turned to the big screen in the family’s living room.

“I was watching the part about potato power,” Adam explained, describing a special bonus feature in the “Toy Story III” DVD in which Buzz Lightyear harvests electricity from spuds. “I wanted to see if it was true. I thought it was cool.”

After a trip to the grocery store, Adam tested the hypothesis by wiring various potato varieties to a multi-circuit tester and a small digital clock.

Energy stores in Russet potatoes, sweet potatoes and red potatoes were compared.

“I thought the Russet potato would have the most power,” Adam said, “but the little red kind do."

According to Adam's scientific documentation, the red potato variety was tested on three separate occasions, with near identical findings.

"On the final test of the Red potato, the energy output was 1.69 (volts) and 24 hours later had an energy output of 1.48 (volts)," the findings read.

"The clock just kept going. We finally had to stop it because I had to go to school," Adam explained.

Despite having to cut his experiment a bit short, Adam demonstrated that red potatoes store enough energy to power a little digital clock for at least 24 hours.

Adam documented his findings and presented them to the class. His efforts garnered a blue ribbon in the Donald Graham science fair and advanced him to district-level competition, where his potato power project took third-place honors on Feb. 28.

So what’s next?

“Science is my favorite class. I want to test other things, like fruit,” Adam said.

Grabbing a few lemons out of the family kitchen one recent evening, the science whiz and his little brother Nathan began experimenting. They wired up the citrus to the multi-circuit tester and checked the reading.

“Nothing,” Adam announced. “We’ll have to try some other things …”