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from how Stuff works dot com where smart Happens. Hi, I'm Marshall Brain with today's question, how does the lighter in a barbecue grill work? In a barbecue grill, you normally have a push button lighter. You push the button, it makes a clunking sound and a spark appears inside the gas grill. How does that work? A barbecue lighter uses something called piezo electricity to generate a nice spark
that lights the grill. Piezo in Greek means pressure, and you find piezzo electric materials in a number of different places. For example, all of these products depend on the piezo electric effect. The push button lighter and a barbecue grill, the pushbutton lighter on a cigarette lighter, piezo electric beepers which are common in digital watches and just about anything
electronic that goes deep. Piezo electric tweeters and stereo speakers, the sound generating a raise for sonar, fish finders and ultrasound devices. Crystal microphones, phonograph needles, and the quartz crystals used in most digital clocks, watches and timers as the time base. Certain crystaline materials, like courts, rochelle salts, and
certain ceramics have piezo electric properties. When you apply pressure to them, you get a charge separation within the crystal and a voltage across the crystal that is sometimes extremely high. For example, in a barbecue lighter, the popping noise you hear is a little spring loaded hammer hitting at crystal and generating thousands of volts across the two faces of that crystal. A voltage this high is identical to the voltage that drives a spark plug in a gasoline engine.
The crystals voltage can generate a nice spark that lights the gas in the grill. In a crystal microphone, air pressure deforms the crystal enough to cause very small voltage changes in the crystal. These voltage changes are amplified and used to record or transmit sounds. Piece of electric materials also work the other way. If you apply a voltage across the crystal, the crystal will change shape. The change in shape is very slight in most cases, but it's
enough to drive small speakers. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an email at podcast at house stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the brain stuff blog on the how stuff works dot com home page. Audible dot com is the leading provider of downloadable digital audio books and spoken word entertainment.
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