Slashdot Mirror
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."
These things might make cool rave lights since they would glow so when people dance! And they wouldn't run out, so they would be reusable for the next event.
But seriously, PiezoElectric power will likely be used as a parasitic power source for lots of small devices. Self-charging laptops, Forever Flashlights, etc. It might be the only way to power nanoscale devices like found in The Diamond Age
I thought of those when I first read the "in the heels of soldier's boots" in the story.
Cops loved it when crime suspects wearing those hip shoes tried to sneak away into the night.
Ever dream you could fly? Get up from the Flight Sim. I Fly
Sure, I wouldn't give one to my kids (which I'm done having, btw), but it's safe. What were those military lights called? Watchlights? Watchglasses? Whatever -- they were regarded as safe, I believe.
Method of processing duck feet
Probably 10 mA, which would be on the low end of where LEDs are generally rated.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
They're called "location markers", but could probably be keychains in a pinch.
t ml
http://www.ameriglo.net/pages/locationmarkers.h
The tension in each spoke varies cyclically as the wheel turns. Just put a piezoelectric generator in series with each spoke.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Those glow sticks are popular items on E-bay.
Of course they'd either have to be safe for consumption or have the beverage container's opening be filtered with a mesh so they couldn't be swallowed.
Look up the Japanese soft drink Lamune. It used a particularly unique design in which the drink was sealed by a marble stuck in the neck of the bottle. To open you pushed the marble down into the bottle. If you wanted to save a little for later you could flip the bottle upside down and suck on it, the marble would fall down and reseal the bottle.
Disclaimer; I am a Physics Undergraduate & have just spent the day on a tour of JET, where they use tritium as a fuel to start a nuclear fusion reaction.
;) In case of contamination by oxidised tritium, the radioactivity of the patient's urine is monitored, as beer is poured down their throat to 'flush the system out'.
Gaseous tritium is absolutely fine, it decays by beta emission - but the electron is so unenergetic that it can't even penetrate skin.
However, if the tritium oxidises, it becomes heavy water which can get directly absorbed by one's lungs. In which case, it pases through the body after a few days in the standard way
The safe dose for gaseous tritium is 10s of thousands of times higher than that for oxidised tritium; if you did crack one of those vials, I doubt much harm would come to you at all. Any tritium released into the atmosphere will quickly diffuse into space [also the reason why there's precious little atmospheric hydrogen]...
No need to worry, these are absolutely safe. Even if you break open the capsule containing the Tritium (3H) and ingest the whole lot, there will be no need to fill out a will. The amount of 3H in these devices is limited to less than 25 millicuries and at a committed effective dose of 64 millirem per mCi you could only possibly be exposed to a REM or 2 in the absolute worse case scenario. The yearly limit for radiation workers set by the DOE is 5 REM, so I think you will be OK!! :-)
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
For the conservation laws to work the highway must flex in proportion to the applied load. Normally the deformation is both very small and elastic in nature. Occasionally, (think lots of slow moving trucks on a hot summer day), it is significant and permenant.
I am seriously afraid that you are mistaken. Recently I did tons of projects with normal cheap-ass LEDs and I was generally running them off 15 mA, and they could easily handle more.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.