The Ubiquitous LED Becomes More Ubiquitous

LiberalApplication writes "Piezoelectric generators have been mentioned here before, regarding the military's plan to integrate them into the heels of boots for the purposes of harvesting electricity from the cumulative stompage of a soldier, but now someone has come up with the idea to combine them with LEDs and cast the entire assembly into a little block of resin. Well, a stick, really. If you were getting tired of seeing little blinky lights everywhere, you ain't seen nothing yet."

Comments

Re:Lots of uses for Piezoelectric

[riprjak]

You dickhead, the "Forever Flashlight" has absolutely NOTHING to do with Piezoelectric crystals and the self charging laptop uses the same principle... It uses Faradays principle of induction in the guise of a copper coil and a magnet... The Piezoelectric effect is very cool, but you have failed to give us any examples of it.

The same induction principle could be used to power nanoscale devices; but nano scale devices will most likely be powered chemically (like our metabolism) as the strain required to generate the electricity is likely to crush the nanoscale device against said crystal...

So many stupid people, so few bullets.
"Congratulations Bladric, you must be the first person in history to spell Christmas without getting any of the letters right"
-The Black Adder's Christmas Carol

Re:Lots of uses for Piezoelectric

[dpp]

Actually I have an exceptional understanding of physics. If you want a more rigorous analysis, then assumuing negligible energy loss to heat, and assuming an isolated piezo crystal (in a vacuum), then yes, 1 watt of sound energy will produce 1 watt of electricity.

"1 watt of sound energy"? Does your exceptional understanding of physics extend to the difference between power and energy? :-)