Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

i wanted to do a project building a soil based microbial fuel cell and testing the affect of salt on the electricity produced.
i have a lot of my materials already.
what is the shortest amount of time to do this experiment? my actual project isnt due until february though.

That depends a lot on how much R&D is needed to make such a cell. If it takes many tries to get something that works, it could take months. If, however, it can be based on something like this:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Simple- ... -An-Algae/

Then a month might be enough, assuming you have a lot (days) of time available every week.

This is just my guess, and I have never done experiments of this sort, so take it with a grain
(a box perhaps ) of salt.