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:Children's Shoes

[netringer]

You know, I've noticed glowing blinking lights embedded in children's shoes for years. Are those lights battery powered?

Yes. There are button cells and switches embedded in the sole of the shoes.

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.

Re:[ot] tritium?!?

[Deagol]

I did my homework. The radiation emmited by these things is about as low-power as you get (even in nature). If you ingest the stuff, however, better file your will in a month or two. The stuff reacts as normal hydrogen, and is diffused throught the food chains (hydrocarbons -- fats!) and water supplies. Contamination is the major problem. But I'm guessing the mercury & lead in my 19" CRT would be far worse upon disposal, as well as the PCBs in my PC.

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.

Re:Bicycles...

[John Hasler]

The tension in each spoke varies cyclically as the wheel turns. Just put a piezoelectric generator in series with each spoke.

Re:[ot] tritium?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

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 ;) 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'.

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]...

Re:[ot] tritium?!?

[deglr6328]

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!! :-)