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Talk-Powered Cell Phones Won't Need Batteries
alphadogg writes "It's possible that in the future conversations on your cell phone could generate enough electrical power to run the phone, without batteries.
That's one possible outcome of recent work by a team of Texas researchers, who appear to have discovered that by building a certain type of piezoelectric material to a specific thickness (about 21 nanometers, compared to a typical human hair of 100,000 nanometers), you can boost its energy production by 100 percent. And the technology could power not just phones, but a whole range of low-power mobile devices and sensors. The breakthrough is an example of 'energy harvesting' that can convert one kind of energy, such as vibrations or solar rays, into electricity."
That's why people are always shouting at them?
Just set it in a Pyramid and use pyramid power to keep it topped off. That is what they ancient Egyptians did.
Don't forget to call your Mummy.
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
Mmmm, I dunno. If this turns out to be true my wife could talk on the phone enough to power the whole grid.
Wonderful. I can just imagine being in a restaurant or an elevator with a group of people with phones all saying "Low Power - please speak louder."
Have you tried turning it off and on again?
These could be wall panel in loud factories and make the electric meters run slower....someday, maybe even backwards...wait....that darn 2nd law of Thermodynamics, again! Okay, slower.
I can imagine at some point in the future it would benefit us to produce these in massive quantities, gigantic vats 10 stories tall, thousands of incubators for these piezo powerplants.. load them up in special military aircraft and spray them far and wide.. across the great plains, the bread basket of america., absorbed into the living breathing cellulose of corn and wheat and soy beans.. through the miracle of the modern food chain all human beings would become self powering devices capable of extraordinary feats, possibly jumping tall buildings in a single leap? In the dark our eyes would glow and a vibrant radiance of glorious splendor would be self perpetuating at the local discoteks.
I don't know if this would work for me, because I usually just end up listening on my phone.
Yes, honey. Ok, honey. Will do, honey.
However Olivetti is working on a cellphone powered like a self-winding watch, by arm-motion.
Just hand these out to teenage girls and we'll have enough power to supply the entire world for all its needs.
-- Will program for bandwidth
Hey, my phone's running low on power, let me find some heavy traffic and big trucks so it'll be loud enough for me to hear you!"
Next thing you know you'll have to shake your phone to get features to work (oh, wait...)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
...I'm just charging my batteries.
"battery's almost dying, I need to talk some more, let me call AOL and try to cancel."
Just hold one of the headphones up to it once in a while.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
His heart implant is failing hand me a vibrator stat!
Does this mean with enough teenage girls in the house you could get all the free energy you want?
Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! YES! YES! YES! YES! YES YES YES YES! YES-YES-YES-YES! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
As if millions of cellphone users cried out "bullshit!" and were suddenly silenced.
If you assume normal human speech is about 60dB. We know dB = 10 log(I/I0) where I0 is 10^-12 W/m^2. So 60dB works out to about 10^-6 W/m^2 -- that's a microwatt per square meter. With 100% efficiency and a mike of 1 cm^2 collecting area, that's around 10^-10 W -- 0.1 nano-watts. (Thanks phliar for the calculations.)
Then utilize this energy using recent advances in String Theory, and you have a workable solution.
Here's a picture of a prototype.