Author Topic: Making the battery obsolete! (Read 246 times)

StarOfAfrica2 · « **on:** April 10, 2006, 03:38:51 PM »

Nice article to open the paper to this morning. Isnt technology wonderful?

Applications are almost endless, anything small that would use a battery for power could probably be adapted.

http://starbulletin.com/2006/04/10/news/story01.html

*Edit

This struck me as particularly timely:

Quote

Homeland security is another area that could benefit: All or parts of the U.S.-Mexican border could be fitted with sensors that would operate on the invisible grid of energy that already permeates most of North American airspace.

Octavius · « **Reply #1 on:** April 10, 2006, 03:49:09 PM »

Things like this make me happy to be alive today. A cleaner, more efficient future... Now where's my holodeck!?

fartwinkle · « **Reply #2 on:** April 10, 2006, 03:53:10 PM »

Dildo users rejoice:rofl

BlueJ1 · « **Reply #3 on:** April 10, 2006, 03:53:58 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Octavius
Things like this make me happy to be alive today. A cleaner, more efficient future... Now where's my holodeck!?

The things I would do...

Goomba · « **Reply #4 on:** April 10, 2006, 04:02:45 PM »

Something smells fishy here...

There are too many generalities, too much journalistic fluff. I'm wary.

Consider: "Photons", "electromagnetic waves", "radio waste" and "beam scavenging" are used almost interchangeably in this article.

And yet....I would not call these interchangeable words. Photons and radio energy are simply not the same thing. Neither are photons and waves.

Consider also: the article says the company has variously received about $490,000 for product research. A) That's just not enough money to get anywhere near a useful product. If it were, we'd have had fuel cells in our cars by 1975. B) A little money to "look into" a concept does not mean it's validated.

Anyway...I'm not saying I know any better than the next guy. I'm just saying that this particular article is either very poorly written and incomplete, or the whole thing is a lengthy stretch of an iffy idea, being used to lay hands on grant money.

Of course, it could just be a bad article, written to sound like the author had a clue.

OOORR.....I'm completely wrong.

StarOfAfrica2 · « **Reply #5 on:** April 10, 2006, 04:51:47 PM »

Of the two newspapers here, if I had to rate them on a scale of 1 to 10 for professionalism in their writing, the Star Bulletin would get a 3, maybe a 4 most times. It really shows through in their political stories. Total lack of objectivity and selective use of facts. I figured a science story would be fairly safe, but even then you noted where a lack of knowledge about the subject can lead a less professional writer to use terms interchangeably that arent really at all. Big difference? Their stories are free on the internet, while the other local paper requires you to register and pay for access to their stories online.

Readers are free to form their own opinions.

ChickenHawk · « **Reply #6 on:** April 10, 2006, 05:43:36 PM »

It will be very cool if they can pull it off. But I agree with Goomba in that the story was too general and quoted no specifics.

How much power is generated?
How little energy will the chips and sensors of the "not too distant future" need to run on?
Can they build the device to collect power from photon energy, vibration, heat fluctuation, sound waves and radiation all in the same device?
How does it work?
What's the difference between this thing collecting photon energy and solar cells so readily available today?
Will it be cost effective?

I hope they can pull it off but I'd be very curious to see how it works and how big the prototypes are.