An inexpensive and simple class participation demonstration uses students, short lengths of metal pipe, and an inexpensive digital voltmeter to make a battery of students. Data taken illustrate the combination of emfs in series and parallel. This apparatus was awarded second place and a low‐cost award in the 2007 AAPT Apparatus Competition.

Topics
Voltmeter, Batteries, Education
1.
Bern Dibner, Alessandro Volta and the Electric Battery (Franklin Watts, New York, 1964), pp. 40–50.
2.
Alessandro Volta, “On the Electricity excited by the mere Contact of conducting substances…,” Philosophical Transactions for 1800, Part 2, translated and reprinted in Dibner, Ref. 1, pp. 111–131.
3.
Ron Hipschman, “Hand Battery,” Exploratorium Cookbook II (Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA), pp. 91.1–91.2.
4.
Adam
Niculescu
 and
Peter
Martin
, “
Making and evaluating an electrical battery
,”
Phys. Teach.
44
,
343
–
347
(Sept.
2006
).
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© 2010 American Association of Physics Teachers.
2010
American Association of Physics Teachers
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