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."
I think self-powered and self-contained light sources are really cool. I'd rather have a Glowring, but they can't be imported for resale in the US/Canada. Any enterprising folks across the pond wish to work out a deal and get me some? ;-)
Method of processing duck feet
the military's plan to integrate them into the heels of boots
I wonder if they will resemble these.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Am I the only one who thinks this would be a neat thing to embed in a clear drumstick and then use at concert?
Hell, disperse the little ones in the crowd and turn the whole place into a giant pulsating light...
Actually, I thought you'd rather want him to miss you
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
they got the idea from the airforce who uses this idea to damp wing vibration.
in both cases active vibration is lighter weight than passive damping materials. (unfortunately the K2s are still heavy as sin, so really it was a gimmick aimed at nerds. still it worked--I bought the skis!)
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Well, they need batteries, but you might be satisfied with Hokey Spokes. They even communicate somehow and sync if you have several on one wheel.
I once disassembled a early model of solar-powered credit card-sized calculator (one with no battery at all). While holding the circuit board near a light, I noticed a little glow ont he backside of the board. The designer had used an LED as a cheap voltage regulator. The LED lit up to dump excess energy coming from the solar cells.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
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.
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!"