Piezoelectricity - why hitting crystals makes electricity

Heya, Steve. Good to see you back again.

The part of this video that I think I most appreciate is the actual look at the guts of a piezo electric safety lighter. I've used them for a long time and never quite been sure how they work on the inside.

I also appreciate Steve's comments on quarts 'healing crystals' around 1:40. "Don't know if you take it orally or..."

And then we get into the fact that piezoelectricity is dependent on the electronegativity differences in a quart crystal (admittedly simplified in Steve's peanut-butter-jar model). I'm totally duplicating this post for my material science blog because of that explanation.

Piezoelectricity - why hitting crystals makes electricity

Piezoelectricity is so cool.

The fact that if you deform crystals, you can produce a voltage difference to get a spark...or that you can introduce a voltage difference to deform a crystal (like how a fan is a generator but in reverse or how LEDs are solar cells but in reverse) is amazing to me.

And Steve Mould's explanation of why that works - with the crunchy and smooth peanut butter lids - is just brilliant.

I'd known that piezo crystals were the guts of a grill lighter for a long time, but it was a long time before I found out other uses like the 'speakers' within greeting cards or microphones and guitar pickups.