Engine On a Chip May Beat the Battery

Krishna Dagli writes, "MIT researchers are putting a tiny gas-turbine engine inside a silicon chip about the size of a quarter. The resulting device could run 10 times longer than a battery of the same weight, powering laptops, cell phones, radios, and other electronic devices." From the article: "All the parts work. We're now trying to get them all to work on the same day on the same lab bench." The goal is to do that by the end of the year.

Comments

Wow!

[Kirin Fenrir]

It's the energy source of the future! It's...

...gas?

All parts work, just need to put it together

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

ha, ha ha. How many times the rookies in my dept have come to me excitedly and said, "Great news Boss, Got all the functions implemented and unit testing checked out ok. All I need to do is to put it together. Finished 90% of the code in just 10% of the time. Want to take a month off to chill out in Aruba!"

Then they spend 200% of the allotted time to make sure what they wrote in the first 10% interact with one another correctly.

p = mv & F =ma

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the mass of these materials is super small, the fact that they are moving at high velocity is no cause to hide under one's bed.

Also, at 20,000 rpm .. assuming that the "revolution" is a distance of 1 or 2 millimeters .. the ACTUAL velocity is nothing to send a letter home with.

Do the math (remember we are talking about the speed of the part of the object that is actually moving).

Another way of looking at it .. the total force cannot exceed the energy output of the gas expansion .. which is the result of a few micrograms of fuel.

Why???

[thepacketmaster]

Other than the obvious geek factor, why would we want to increase our dependancy on a fossil fuel.

Re:p = mv & F =ma

[JesseL]

Well according to another article the turbine is 4mm in diameter, so google says .5 * 4mm * pi * 20000 is about 125.6 meters. 125 meters per second is about the velocity of a low end bb gun. Given my adolecent expirimentation in terminal ballistics, a similar low end bb gun will barely penetrate both sides of a soda can. It should be a simple matter to provide the engine with a scatter shield stronger than a soda can.