Sukrit Agrawal - A Child's Experiment

Sukrit Agrawal - A Child's Experiment Sukrit Agrawal is the co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of AMD, a Florida-based medical supply company that, in its more than twenty years of doing business, has become one of the nation's leading diversified healthcare supply distributors, and a global supplier of medical kits and sets.

He is a graduate of Duke University, where he earned a degree in Electrical Engineering, and a graduate of Florida International University, where he received his Master of Business Administration degree.

Sukrit Agrawal is a devoted family man and father who says that if he were able to, he would experience life all over again through the eyes of his children. As much as he has enjoyed building AMD into its position of prominence, he values being a good father above all else, and that being a good father is his dream job.

One of his favorite activities, he says, is "building stuff with children." As an electrical engineer he has the skills to build some very cool stuff, ranging from simple experiments that demonstrate fundamental principles, to more involved projects capable of both instructing and entertaining his kids.

A simple and classic experiment in static electricity involves taking an ordinary balloon and rubbing it against wool fabric. By moving the balloon back and forth, Sukrit Agrawal explains, you give it energy. Some of the electrons in the balloon's rubber molecules are actually knocked free, and gather on the fabric. The balloon becomes slightly positively charged, and the wool fabric is negatively charged. Because the opposite charges attract each other, the wool sticks to the balloon.

And even cooler experiment is making a lemon battery, which Sukrit Agrawal also has the skill to demonstrate. It involves taking an ordinary lemon, some 8-gauge copper wire, an ordinary steel paperclip, and some coarse sandpaper. He uses wire cutters to strip off the rubber insulation from the copper wire, and then snips about two inches of the bare wire.

He takes a similar length of the paperclip. He uses the sandpaper to smooth out any rough spots in the wire. After softening the lemon a little by rolling it on the table with his palm, he pushes the two wire strips into it so they are very close but not touching.

For the grand finale of this experiment, Sukrit Agrawal invites the child to touch the tip of his or her wet tongue to the free ends of the wire. They get a very slight tingling sensation and a metallic taste. The lemon battery is voltaic, meaning it changes chemical energy into electrical energy. The two different metal strips act as electrodes, and the juice in the lemon is an electrolyte, a solution that conducts electricity. Placing a tongue on the two electrodes closes this simple circuit, producing the tingling sensation.