Nanotech Pinball and Miniature Engines

glenmark writes "Researchers at the Solid State Electronics Laboratory at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden have developed the world's smallest pinball game. The video is fascinating. The flippers are electrostatically-actuated monocrystalline silicon cantilevers. I hope Pat Lawlor and Steve Ritchie see this. I have a feeling they would get a kick out of it." And in another nanotech story, psmears writes "Three hundred times more powerful than ordinary batteries, but much lighter and smaller? Researchers at the University of Birmingham have developed a micro-engine that will allow people to charge mobile phones using lighter fluid. Further information at Research-TV including photos and a film."

Comments

My two cents

[Daniel Rutter]

I didn't link to anything about the recent University of Birmingham press release in the column I put up the other day about fuel cells and related technologies. The reason why I didn't is that their press release doesn't make a lot of sense, and there's nothing more substantial on their site or in the video. This piece is better, but not much better, at least for the microengine-instead-of-battery applications to which people keep saying their developments apply.

"These micro-engines have over 300 times more energy than an ordinary battery" is meaningless. If they mean total energy delivery over whatever time period you like, then microengines can beat batteries by a factor of a million trillion zillion, as long as you hook them up to a big enough fuel tank. In actual power capacity, though, microengines aren't anything special at all, yet.

The aim is little turbines the size of a sugar cube that run from butane or propane or whatever, and have several watts of output power; prototypes of such things have been spinning for a while now. The microengines shown in the U of B release, though, are minuscule piston units which have power output in the microwatts, if that. Heck, the ones shown in the release don't even have generators attached to them, so their electrical output at the moment is zero!

For your amusement: A reader also pointed this out to me; it's a reprint of a piece on the subject from the British "Sun" tabloid, and it reads as if they took the U of B press release and put it through a Markov chain program, or something.

It's good to know that alcoholism in the press is alive and well.

300 times more energy than an ordinary battery...?

[relativePositioning]

"These micro-engines have over 300 times more energy than an ordinary battery and are much lighter and smaller."

So a cellphone that needs a daily charging will now need a refill once a year?

I would wager that this claim carries a degree of exaggeration.