Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

can I make a peltier cooler with iron & copper wires and a 12 v battery only?
I don't want to use heat sink and semiconductor meterials.Does this cooler have enough ability to cool o freeze a glass of water?Please tell me wheather I have to use resistor or not.

seahorse wrote:can I make a peltier cooler with iron & copper wires and a 12 v battery only?Does this cooler have enough ability to cool o freeze a glass of water?[

This sounds like a good question to research yourself.
You should do some research/reading on "Thermoelectric materials" to find your answer.

Iron/copper junctions have been used to make thermocouples where several hundreds of degrees of temperature difference between a hot and cold junction will produce an electric field in the milli-volt per junction range which means the conversion is very inefficient.

quote="seahorse"]Please tell me wheather I have to use resistor or not.[/quote]
You should do some research/reading on Ohms law. Iron and copper are metals which are good conductors (have low resistance) so unless you use wires that are very small in diameter and are miles long, they will have very low resistance so there will be lots of current flowing which will heat the materials and the battery and possibly cause an explosion of the battery.

Thank u