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Body Powered Batteries -- Thermoelectrics
An Anonymous Coward writes: "According to this story on Yahoo, the folks at Applied Digital Solutions have "developed a miniaturized thermoelectric generator -- a half-inch diameter ceramic-based `battery' that converts low gradient body heat flow into electrical power." Right now they can power watches or small medical devices. How long before these things can power my handheld?"
What happens when you take your wristwatch off for 8 to 10 hours? Sure, generating electricity from body heat is fine when its a pacemaker... take that off and you're likely going to miss it before the eight hour mark.
Nate
-- Watch the REAL Jon Katz.
How expensive is the material to create these small batteries? It's a ceramic, so would it be feasible to create bricks which could be used to line or even build smokestacks? Could this be a replacement for solar cells (the article indicates a temperature gradient as a power source, and those are everywhere). Obviously, these don't produce much energy, but ceramics are notoriously easy to mass produce and fashion into all sorts of artsy shapes.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Of course the Matrix doesn't work exactly right. Any decent scientist could come up with dozens of things that can't quite work in the real world, but that's not the point.
IT'S A MOVIE.
As far as I'm concerned all the details of the world outside the matrix are just fantastical psuedo-science to justify the story they want to tell about and inside the matrix. It's a story about preceptions of reality and the nature of intelligence. The details of the technology aren't important to the points they are really trying to make. Get over it.