Sandia's Smart Heat Pipe

An anonymous reader writes "Science Blog is reporting a story from Sandia National Laboratory, best known for its nuclear weapons research. "Evacuating heat is one of the great problems facing engineers as they design faster laptops by downsizing circuit sizes and stacking chips one above the other. The heat from more circuits and chips increase the likelihood of circuit failures as well as overly heated laps. "Space, military, and consumer applications, are all bumping up against a thermal barrier," says Sandia researcher Mike Rightley, whose newly patented "smart" heat pipe seems to solve the problem. The simple, self-powered mechanism transfers heat to the side edge of the computer, where air fins or a tiny fan can dissipate the unwanted energy into air."

Comments

SUE

[katalyst]

I distinctly remember a law suit which involved a customer suing McDonalds because they hadn't warned her that the coffee was HOT. I guess laptops have to come with that warning too. Meanwhile, The register (register.co.uk) had an article about a buy burning his weenie thanks to a laptop.
The bonus - here is a link for a genius who wanted to water cool his cpu http://www.avforums.com/frame.html?http://www.avfo rums.com/forums/showthread.php?s=24bcc587f9de10276 57e1d7862a85f58&threadid=56924