Forget the Charger? Power a Smartphone With Your Body

By: <a href="http://www.twitter.com/femmasterbrew">Celena Cipriaso</a>, iQ Contributor  If you’re a person constantly on the go, imagine never dealing with a dying cellphone again. Sound too good to be true? Believe it or not, our own bodies are capable of providing that extra energy boost. Granted, the idea of humans as battery chargers may seem like a plot ripped straight out of The Matrix, but Professor David Carroll, Director for the Center of Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials, claimed, “The metabolism of the human body does generate a fair amount of power.” Carroll became repeatedly frustrated when his cell’s battery would drain after long conversations with his wife. He turned to his frequent source of inspiration – his clever 11-year-old daughter – to figure out a way to extend the battery life. They discussed how warm a phone becomes after a long period of use and joked about creating a “butt charger,” which would provide power by simply putting the cell in your pocket and sitting on it. He then deduced that a thermoelectric device could be created to convert a person’s body heat into an electrical charge. This brainstorming session eventually gave birth to Power Felt, a fabric like material that’s embedded with tiny carbon nanotubes locked up in flexible plastic fibers. <img src="http://3rings.designerpages.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/explore-the-amazing-potential-of-power-felt-sub1.jpg" alt="" /> <a href="http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl203806q" target="_blank">Power Felt</a> has the potential to become one of the most widely used thermoelectric devices applied to consumer products. Although thermoeletrics are already utilized in mobile refrigerators, CPU coolers, and satellites sent into orbit, many issues have prohibited these devices from broader use. In laboratories, thermoelectrics are often developed with extreme heterogeneous materials. According to Carroll, “that approach is fine for a laboratory, but it doesn’t work so well in the real world. You can’t wash it. You can’t expose it to water or salt water. “Carroll believed that what makes Power Felt special is that “you can take a nail and drive through it and it’ll still work.” Another huge issue is affordability. Many thermoelectrics are made with compound bismuth telluride, an expensive component that amounts to about $1,000 per kilogram. By contrast, Power Felt could potentially cost only a couple of dollars per square foot. Carroll was quick to point out that Power Felt is not capable of providing “free power for the masses.” However, the material can generate a good deal of power when used in large amounts. For example, Carroll said, “Instead of having solar panels on your roof, what you do is put [Power Felt] beneath your shingles.   Since it’s heat that runs [the power], it doesn’t turn off when the sun goes down.” Carroll claimed that Power Felt had a potential to be “ubiquitous in nature” because the material could be “anywhere because anyone can afford to use it.”  Power Felt isn’t the only mobile energy booster out there.  Sixteen-year-old B<a href="http://www.foxnews.com/fncu/current-interns/blog/2012/05/24/teen-s-invention-could-benefit-military" target="_blank">raxton Harris</a> believed that the act of walking could be used as a way to generate electricity. For Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair, Harris created a hiking boot that captured the power of a foot’s swinging movement with oscilloscope, an inductor, a resister and magnets. With 100,000 steps, Harris’s creation could recharge a cellphone. These inventions foster more than just scientific gains. Harris’s project inspired artist <a href="http://www.merijnhos.com" target="_blank">Merijn Hos</a> to create <a href="http://sciart.intel.com/view/everlasting_energy" target="_blank">Everlasting Energy</a>, a colorful ink and graphic design piece he created for Intel’s <a href="http://sciart.intel.com/" target="_blank">SciArt</a> series (pictured below), an art collection that celebrates significant scientific breakthroughs from Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair.  <img src="http://kapost-files-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/asset/file/4fe9ed9b9cb4d30001000385/sciart.png" alt="" /> In Hos’ artistic statement for the work, he wrote that he believed that Harris’s work had “the power to change the way we think about generating energy.” The same could be said of Power Felt. Both devices encourage the idea of utilizing the full potential of the human body, which has always been an underestimated energy source. On a grander scale, Carroll envisioned that Power Felt will become part of the growing tide of technology that provides “personalized benefits based on the infinite knowledge that exists on the web, [which will be] powered by [our] own bodies.”  Not quite like The Matrix, but possibly the closest we may come to inserting a plug into our brains and gaining instant knowledge. See Power Felt in action below from <a href="mashable.com/2012/02/24/power-felt/">Mashable</a>:  <iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/I2p_KWsBiqs" width="520" height="293"></iframe>  <script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[ var _kapost_data = _kapost_data || []; _kapost_data.push([1, "4fd0c8242efec800010027cf", "4fda1d381813bb00010004ac", "4fce7dcb63af1f0001000117", escape("Media")]); (function() { var ka = document.createElement('script'); ka.async=true; ka.id="kp_tracker"; ka.src="http://savoy-prod.heroku.com/javascripts/tracker.js"; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ka, s); })(); // ]]></script> Thumbnail image c/o of Wake Forest University.

Forget the Charger? Power a Smartphone With Your Body

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