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Tapping Trees for Electricity?
dr_agonfly writes "Despite many skeptics, a Massachusetts company is getting investor interest in developing a process to tap electric power from trees. MagCap is looking to boost the current power from just under 2 volts to a more useful 12 volts with investor funding." From the article: "Jim Manwell, director of the University of Massachusetts Amherst's Renewable Energy Resource Laboratory, questioned the potential of MagCap's plans. 'I'm wildly skeptical,' he said. 'I would need to see proof before I believed it. It strikes me as pretty questionable for a number of reasons.'"
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
Broadband over electric trees?
On second thought, I don't think they have electricity in those dens. We'll be living better than ewoks!
-Rob
Biblical fiscal responsibility
Ever seen "The Matrix"? What goes around, comes around.
Ah, I see. Trees produce lightning. But surely that would be more than 2 volts?
Dark Reflection
Now that's what I call Flower Power
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
...except that there will be trees instead of humans!!! I love it! Also, no need to develop a VR world to keep trees happy and growing :-)!
I pine for the day that this kind of energy production becomes poplar.
What's being tapped here are reckless investors. Personally I'm sticking with cold fusion.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
Nah!
Tapping the trees for current will turn them into Triffids and they'll gobble us all up. Don't bother trying to climb a tree to get away from them, either.
at least they're not trying use them for cellular phone, they'll try to impress their own ring-tones on us
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Well, yes, but how are you going to raise millions in "investment" capital by pointing that out?
"In my 25 years of practicing patent law, I've never seen anything like this."
Ah, well, if a lawyer hasn't seen anything like it it must be a revolution in chemistry.
KFG
Sorry, couldn't help myself...
so we can all walk around with extension cords hanging off our arms?
That's not where they'll put the cord.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
is that what they call 'green' power?
Does that mean we should research away to increase that small voltage to something larger so we can all walk around with extension cords hanging off our arms?
No, that would be limbs
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
From TFA:
Wadle became interested in the concept while studying lightning coming from the ground, "which led him to believe that there's some type of power emanating from earth, which led him to trees," Lagadinos said.
Not that that chain of reasoning inspires any confidence what-so-ever in me, the free power apparently comes from the ground, not the sky...
Unless the "trees" he is talking about only have a couple branches at the top and really long, ropey leaves that seem to go to another "tree" just like it...
The only power they are working on is the power to move money from investors accounts to theirs.
'Effect' is used as a noun. 'Affect' is used as a verb.
:)
Except when 'effect' is used as a verb, or when 'affect' is used as a noun. Both are perfectly legitimate words; they just almost never mean what the writer intended