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Why Batteries Haven't Kept Up
TimWeigel writes "Ever wonder why we can cram ever more computer power into smaller and smaller devices, but we're still (mostly) slaves to the almighty AA? This article on CNN touches on this very important facet of our lives - why the power sources for our Palm Pilots and Gameboys haven't matched the advances in computing power. In a word: physics." I had an interesting conversation with a person who's been doing a lot of research into batteries. Batteries have grown at standard normal industrial rates - which are much slower then Moore's Law, and hence, the source of our problem.
lame article: It ignores fuel cells, atomic batteries and the fact that some people do not seem to care about battery weight / power.
Example : In 1987 Apple asked potential portable computer consumers to rate, in numerical order 10 different attributes of a system they cared about most.
Battery longevity came in LAT place... even so apple demanded a pure CMOS system, including CMOS cpu for its portable mac and a non backlit screen resulting in a staggering 10 hour battery life.
10 hours of use.
Humorously with no more low power general purpose cpus in existence in 1998 comsumers rated battery duration MOST IMPORTANT, first place above performance.
Hilarious.
Apple tried to do the impossible and the "Wallstreet" 300 Mhz G3 Powermac laptop used a low power dvd decoder and dvd drive so that the entire system could do someting no ibm pc could do, or still can do nowadays as far as i know.... play an entire two hour (120 minute) dvd movie at full brightness without swapping batteries once. Just one Lithium ion battery.
non stop dvd playback.
now its 2002 and no apple laptop can do that, and i think no comperable highend PeeCee (Wintell) laptop sporting dvd, firewire, fast cpu, etc can play a movie on one battery.
We are going backwards.
Example : a Palm Pilot, even the 8 megabyte (yes 8 MB) Palm 3x, lasts almost 30 days of usage on a pair of AA "1100 milliamp-hour" standard alkaline batteries.
But the color palm eats up batteries because it uses a backlit design, unlike the ingenious Gameboy Advance low poer color screen which requires sunlight but last a long time on its batteries.
But that article is not very techie. It ignores radioactive batteries, fuel cell designs and other energy sources.
batteries. One company reports a 50:1 energy to
weight advantage over lead acid batteries. (How
does that compare to Lithium?). You add energy
electrically - a motor spins up the flywheel.
You get it out electrically - a generator takes
energy from the flywheel. To reduce friction, the
flywheel sits in a vacuum, and uses a magnetic
bearing. 17,000 RPM. They claim a 5% loss per day. It would
be nice to be able to add energy at a high rate -
like at a kilowatt. No memory. When the device
no longer functions, there are no toxic chemicals.
I'd like a laptop that runs for 100 hours between
charges, and charges in a minute. I'd like to
be able to add energy by hand crank, solar cell,
car plug or house plug without funky adapters
to lug around.
There is talk of putting flywheel batteries on
the space station. Twin counter rotating flywheels
reduce torque on the station.
-- Stephen.
Um, how exactly would you build an "antimatter generation plant? Or more specifically, where exactly are you going to get antimatter to use as fuel? There aren't exactly big natural deposits lying around. Antimatter might make an excellent method for storing and transporting energy someday, but it is not itself an energy source. It's just like hydrogen in this sense. You can do lots of interesting things with it, but it is not a fuel source because you have to make it and that process takes more energy than you get out of it.
The first nuclear power plant was fired up in metro Chicago! if they thought it was dangerous
Actually it was dangerous. Starting up a nuclear reactor in a squash court in downtown Chicago was dangerous then, and it's dangerous today. Just because nothing went wrong doesn't make it safe. The risk of blowing up Chicago was probably about zero. The risk of making a big chuck of Chicago uninhabitable and making a lot of people sick had their reactor caught on fire was very real.
The public's fear of nuclear power is not entirely unfounded. Fissonable materials are extremely dangerous to humans. You don't really want to be shipping it around all over the place like gasoline. Accidents do happen. And it's very hard to clean up.
On the other hand, some countries are still actively developing nuclear power. South Africa, I belive, is in the process of building a "pebble bed" reactor which should be quite safe compared to the reactor designs used currently. It is claimed to be meltdown-proof, and the fuel should always stay contained inside of the "pebbles" reducing the risk of contamination. Of course, you still need a plant to manufacture the pebbles themselves, and that plant could turn into a mess if not properly run.
"The same research that is shrinking cell phones has a higher purpose: an exhaust-free electric car."
:)
Gone offtopic, but i think the air-powered car is a better solution than a battery powered car. The air-powered cars in production in Spain are a nice example: you charge the car with a home-compressor, and it gives you 200 miles autonomy (present model).
The exhaust is obviously pure AIR. I'd enjoy the day people put their faces near an exhaust tube to refresh themselves
unfinished: (adj.)