yesterday's weird discovery is that every regular sized carrot I have tested is almost exactly 100kΩ end to end with sharp probes stuck in it. a couple of them come out at 100.0k on the dot.

inb4 NIST carrot-based electrical resistance metrology reference

when I saw the @weirdunits post yesterday about carrots per ohm I spent about 30 seconds trying to decide whether or not to actually go measure a carrot for a laugh, and I'm glad I did because the results were actually way more interesting than I expected. so there's a lesson. always go do the silly thing.

https://chaos.social/@gsuberland/115149719242982295

@gsuberland have you tested multiple lots? Organic vs normal process corners? Temperature dependency?

@gsuberland
Now the real question is, how many watts? 😁🤪
@weirdunits

@mav @weirdunits I don't have a high power kV supply here to test unfortunately.

I've got a 5V 400A supply but ohm's law still applies and it'll only pull 50μA, so about 5μW, from that one.

@azonenberg there is some temperature dependency but, strangely, the coefficient seems to vary positive and negative. no idea why.

@gsuberland (ime non organic carrots taste extremely bitter to me, organic sometimes do but it's less frequent. Very curious what fertilizer or pesticide I'm tasting trace quantities of, or if it's a metabolite or something)

@gsuberland @weirdunits does it fluctuate with current or is it linear?

@CauseOfBSOD @weirdunits I'd be surprised if it did with current specifically, like a semiconductor, but it'd be very hard to test that since the power dissipated would shift the temperature.

@gsuberland @weirdunits please put a banana in the pic for scale.

@lerxst @weirdunits I don't have one unfortunately, so it'll have to be carrot for scale

if someone buys me a curve tracer I will post the IV plots of as many vegetables as you like

and if you get me a really good one I'll even do durian

@gsuberland

@weirdunits

Vdsl over bananas

https://x.com/lauriewired/status/1735348312684020069

@hundhamm @weirdunits I remember that!

@hundhamm @weirdunits I think someone also did PCIe over barbed wire

@gsuberland As it happens I just bought some carrots, so naturally I felt compelled to repeat your experiment.

It started off at almost exactly 100k but dropped quite rapidly, at about 1-2k/sec.

@FenTiger you're the second person to identify this dropping resistance phenomenon!

@gsuberland @FenTiger I've seen it before on multimeters that are hitting the end of battery life. But could equally be real / publishable / Nobel-worthy.

@_thegeoff @FenTiger interestingly the resistance variation over time and temperature is variable enough that I've seen it have both positive and negative signs

@azonenberg
Bitter when raw or when cooked?
@gsuberland

@magnetic_tape @gsuberland raw

@gsuberland @FenTiger So there's a sweetspot between fridge and room temp where carrots superconduct? 😋
Getting about 122kOhms here, but tracking it with temp.

@gsuberland @FenTiger Also, for rigor, I'm getting 953,125 Ohms per carrot.metre

@_thegeoff @FenTiger carrot•meter is going to have to be added to the bot now

@synx508 ahahaha

I'm gonna need to set up a geocities-looking website to catalogue the IV plots and S-params of veg now aren't I?

@synx508 *digs out the NanoVNA*

ok it has been pointed out that one could measure the S-parameters of carrots. and I own a NanoVNA, which is not the most capable device in the world but is still capable of measuring S-parameters out to a few GHz.

@gsuberland S11 10MHz to 12GHz on Romanesco Broccoli needs doing, too.

I also own an LCR meter so I could go measure the L and C, too.

@gsuberland

You mean the lusciousness and the carrottance?

@gsuberland do it. Do it.

@dtl trying to figure out exactly how I physically connect the carrot to the VNA.

... pretty sure that was a unique sentence.

@gsuberland I bet not even @azonenberg has a jig for that.

@dtl @azonenberg I'm also now wondering whether carrots have an element of zero-crossing hysteresis due to electrolytic effects in the cell walls.

@gsuberland how well do they perform as batteries with dissimilar metal probes?

@gsuberland @azonenberg it seems plant cells do cause a phase change due to polarisation of the membrane.
Monitoring of plant water uptake by measuring root dielectric properties on a fine timescale: diurnal changes and response to leaf excision | Plant Methods | Full Text https://share.google/tjh3nMlfYXlCARfsz

@gsuberland What's the capacitance of a blueberry? Some blueberries work with fingerprint sensors!

@gsuberland I use very few discrete fruit and vegetables these days. Mostly integrated kumquats.

@gsuberland @dtl you need an Accurate Precision Carrot connector.

@gsuberland whats the resistance of 0805 worth of carrot, and how to I affix it to a board.

@jonbro about 1.3kΩ, and very carefully

@gsuberland
This is giving me flashbacks to studying #TDR...

@sb on that note I am planning to measure the S-params

@saraislet I don't have any blueberries because they're groooossss

@gsuberland mine's different

@vivianrose you probably want to drop that down to the 2M range to get a better reading

@gsuberland wasn't able to get a reading on any of the other settings

@vivianrose weird, 'cos it's showing 1.1M there.

@saraislet @gsuberland noting that resistance is denoted by R, usually, and wondering how much R in Strawberry?

@mcr314 there are 2 Rs in strawbery

@gsuberland @weirdunits are there any semiconductor vegetables?

@qwazix @weirdunits I don't think there are many silicon, germanium, gallium, or indium rich vegetables out there

@gsuberland makes sense to me because the length of the carrot is determined by the resistance of the soil to it's growth.

10 µS ≈ 1 carrot

@gsuberland @dtl jam two through-hole SMA* connectors into the ends of the carrot

*SMA in this case standing for Serious Measurement Adapter, of course

@gsuberland
I welcome this important contribution to citizen science however I haven't seen anyone ask the important question yet.

Why the fuck were you measuring the resistance of carrots?

Also can you do reactance next? I want to know if I can use a carrot in a pie filter.

@jamesb because https://chaos.social/@weirdunits/115149692101583514

@gsuberland @qwazix @weirdunits there are also organic semiconductors like C60 and Poly(3-hexylthiophene-2,5-diyl)

@jeremy_list @qwazix @weirdunits there are but I've yet to see a fab smashing up carrots for source materials

@gsuberland a useful application of this knowledge: if you're in a cold place where you must wear gloves, a carrot is a good human finger substitute for operating touch screens like your phone.

@trouble most touch screens are capacitive, not resistive. but it probably still works (I'll break out the LCR meter later to check)

@gsuberland adding "one gigantic orange band" to the resistor colour codes

@gsuberland I really, really love that you're measuring carrot resistivity on friday night and finding unusual results.

@gsuberland @kevinbowen I wonder if it would change if you leave the carrot out for long enough for it to dry out a bit, since I’d guess the water in it would be a major factor in carrying charge.