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Hamster-Powered Night Light
An anonymous reader writes "Though Skippy the Hamster powers this night light by running on his excercise wheel, the same concepts and low-rpm alternator design could be applied to a school science project using different energy sources! A small wind or hydro turbine could easily power this alternator. The Otherpower.com staff thought of building a hamster-powered nightlight a couple years ago at a rather, uh, soused company Christmas party. Then recently Analise, an 8th grader from Albuquerque, NM, contacted DanF through the AllExperts.com Science For Kids forum, asking 'Can a rodent generate enough electricity to power a light by running on it's wheel?'"
I got about 1 Watt from my electric hamster but I think you could get much better from the real thing.
1 watt is enough to power a few LEDs. (Or an asynchronous microprocessor)
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
power your website while it's being slashdotted.
Man has finally harnessed the power of animals. Soon we will be able to bring animals to other fields, replacing farm equipment and automobiles.
Let's not forget that one can hate his government, but love his country.
String a baked ham to the thing and see if she can light up Chicago.
Thankyou, I'll be here all week. Try the fish.
Skippy dies due to slashdotting a site with 14 pictures of him... Now who is going to power the annoyingly loud little nightlight?
Hey look no pointless curley braces or semicolons... just like Python
(Cue the 'Step 3: Profit' jokes now... we all know they're coming)
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
I heard a theory once about getting a gym to power their lights from the people in the gym. The idea was to hook up all the bikes to a generator. I think its a good idea.
From ALBUQUERQUE, you say?
ALBUQUERQUE (n.)
A shapeless squiggle which is utterly unlike your normal signature, but which is, nevertheless, all you are able to produce when asked formally to identify yourself. Muslims, whose religion forbids the making of graven images, use albuquerques to decorate their towels, menu cards and pyjamas.
'Can a rodent generate enough electricity to power a light by running on it's wheel?'
If it thinks it's being chased by Richard Gere, then yes, it probably can.
Would it work with badgers?
The people at the Badger Institute Of Devon, England have been conducting experiments and have come to the conclusion that yes, badgers can generate electricity while running in a wheel, if two other conditions are met; those involving mushrooms and a snake. Oh yes, it's a snake.
Magical Trevor, the head of the department, was unavailable for further comment.
Now that we can be replaced with hamsters, why are the machines going to keep us around? I imagine they'll get a great ROI by ditching the human based Matrix in favor of a less complex one designed to simulate a glass cage with tubing in some 5th grader's bedroom.
Google cache here
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
This makes me wonder how much a human would produce in a big wheel or several humans in a long wheel.
A moderately-trained human being can generate about 100 watts for several hours (in addition to the other 100 watts needed for the body to live). Top long-distance athletes (cycling, running) can go up to around 400 watts, but only for a limited amount of time (less than 1 hour). Peak power is of course higher (1 KW for a few seconds?).
He is the light of the world, after all (John 8:12). And he doesn't even need a hamster.
Come Pinky! We must prepare for tomorrow night! Why? What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain? The same thing we do every night, Pinky... Try to power the norhteastern seaboard!!!
So I'm curious. I run/jog a bit, and if I use the gym they have machines that waste electricity just to make me run on the spot.
If we were to get a human-sized hamster wheel, how much energy could I *generate* on it doing a, say, 30 min hard run every morning?
If everyone did this, would it have an impact on our electricity usage in the homes - and provide an incentive for overweight people to jog (not only lose weight, but save money on electricity bills). Not only this, but it's good to jog on a surface which has your footfall a little higher than the point your foot leaves the ground (as a wheel would) because it lessens impact fatigue on your ankles and particularly knees.
I used to have a 1.5V analogue quartz wall clock that was powered by a Crystal Set. With a 10m antenna, I could pull in enough power to run the thing 24/7.
Other things, such as LEDs and small motors, used to get hooked up to the set too.
I also found a 1930s radio speaker in a junk shop - it was in a walnut case and included a multi-tapped transformer to give the speaker numerous effective impedances from 3.4 Ohms all the way up to 2K Ohms. Set on 2K Ohms, the crystal set was easily as loud as a small battery-powered AM radio.
AT&ROFLMAO
This is basically an IIRC (if I recall correctly), but for those of you wanting to know what humans can do along these lines...
1. With a stationary bicycle hooked up to a small generator, a human who is classified as in moderate shape can power a 13 inch black and white television at about an even rate - pedal for half an hour, watch for half an hour.
2. it takes a near olympic grade athelete to power a 19 inch color set continuously and even then, it's a for a single half hour program or less. Mere mortal cyclists can charge a battery and get about a half hour of TV for over an hour's pedalling.
3. Those first two examples are based on 1980's era designs. These days, half an hour of cycling should be able to charge a laptop battery for about 4 hours use, or load up all the rechargeable batteries for several portable music players and portable game systems, and a bit extra for your flashlights.
I'd document these claims in detail and with rigor, but really, the frackin article started off with frackin hamsters and I just thought of a really dumb joke - see my next post.
Who is John Cabal?
Can I get these fricken hamsters with self powered fricken laser beams on their fricken heads?
Who is John Cabal?
I helped design a extremely simple wind generatior system for 3rd world countries that uses discarded 55 gallon drums and car parts as the rotor to drive a pully and modified car alternator. (we designed it so the locals can get over 80% of the parts from abandoned cars that they come across)
we have a few that have survived hurricanes easily and only threw the belt off.
most wind generators can be extremely simple with no moving parts except for the rotor (Yes, it does NOT track with the wind, as it is vertical.)
Animal power generation is certianly possible.
the key is to modify your alternator/generator to use the surplus extreme power magnets and rewind the coils so it will generate decent amperage at low rpm's by adding more coils. (making your own alternator is easy with a car strut+wheelbearing+ break rotor)
I have seen a generator that would produce almost 15 watts at 12 volts from a horse exercize merry-go-round. 2 horses generated an average of 5 watts from less than 12 dollars of parts while they mose-yed around in a circle for a couple of hours, and 99% of that cost was the magnets. certianly cheaper than any solar panels and every watt you pump into that battery is precious... It generated enough power in a small battery bank to light a workroom very well and for a few hours with a 4 watt CF flouresent lamp that makes most 40 watt bulbs look dim.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
a Untrained human can produce easily 25-40 watts for several hours on a recumbent pedal generator. we did this last Field day. 5 Ham radio operators (usually fat guys) on home made recumbent pedal generators made enough electricity by leisurely pedaling to power all the radios used for around the world contacts for that 24 hours. some of the radios had a 100Watt power output and there certianly were more than 4 radios working at a time.
the key is power -> battery bank -> devices. when the radios are recieving they draw very little so the power you generate is stored for that high power intermittent draw.
none of us were atheletes in any way shape or form, and it was not difficult for any of us to do a 2 hour stint on the generators because of thwe recumbent design.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Captured the mouse in my room.
Told him to run fast enough to power my night light.
He didn't run fast enough to make enough light for me to see to feed him so he didn't have enough energy to run fast enough to...
Result: dead mouse. No night light.
Now I can't see to clean up the dead mouse.
Room smells bad.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
The guys at otherpower.com do cool stuff. If you're wondering, "what's the point" with the hamster nightlight, you aren't seeing the whole picture. These guys have built, on their own, dozens of pieces of creative power generator equipment -- mostly out of wood!
Click around on the site a little bit (AFTER the Slashdotting subsides) and check out the other, real stuff they do. Like, making a 3 kilowatt wind turbine using a Volvo brake assembly, neodymium magnets and hand-wound copper coils, and hand-made wooden blades. I dream of having a workshop to do that kind of stuff.