Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Harvest Nano-Power From Hamsters
Al writes "Researchers at Georgia Tech have come up with the ideal way to test a new peizo-electric device that efficiently harvests power from bio-movement — attaching it to a hamster. The device contains a series of zinc-oxide nanowires mounted on top of a flexible plastic surface. As the plastic bends, the wires generate around a nanowatt of power. The Georgia Tech team, led by Zhong Lin Wang, wanted to show that their device could produce power from irregular movements so they attached it to a tiny hamster jacket. They also tried attaching it to a volunteer's finger. Here's a video of the hamster wearing his piezo-power outfit."
Richard Gere
I hope no one tells Minsc!
There is a war going on for your mind.
Someday soon we'll be able to power our computers with armies of hamsters!
http://pinopsida.com
I for one welcome our nano-power generating hamster overlords..
Wouldn't it have been more efficient to attach a generator to the wheel?
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I am most intrigued by the idea of hamsters wearing jackets.
Does it work even if he's just eating popcorn on a piano? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfqNXADl3kU
...I'm pretty sure...
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I'm surprised it has taken this long for a technology like this to come around. Not the hamster part, but the generation of electricity via small/random body movements. Considering we've had self-winding/kinetic watches for a while, I'm surprised this took so long to materialise.
So you need 100 billion hamsters to power a 100 Watt lightbulb.
Fantastic achievement. NEXT!
I was expecting a hamster wheel being used as a generator and thought "Really? That's something new?"
This technology seems a lot more useful as long as they can get it to scale up nicely. It'd be nice to be able to charge a cell phone from the clothing you wear.
Isn't it easier to just strap a traditional generator onto the hamster wheel?
I'm strapping one on for unlimited battery life. Seriously, though, my iPod should never die when I'm on the treadmill burning energy that's just going to waste...
Think about how much energy could be harnessed if they just hooked these things up to slashdotters forearms. It's mindboggling!
This guy's the limit!
The hamster generates more bio-electricity than 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTVs of body heat. Combined with a form of piezo-electricity, the humans have found all the energy they would ever need. There are stores...endless pet stores, were hamsters are no longer born. We are grown. For longest time, I wouldn't belive it...and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watch them liquefy the dead, so they could be fed intravenously to the living. And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is The Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world, built to keep us under control in order to change a hamster into THIS.
"tiny hamster jacket"
Seriously, that phrase would almost win a googlewhack except for the actual occurance in /.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Is this part of the "boxed data center" package? I know they are including power genertators, but I didn't think that it would require massive amounts of hamster food.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
This will have a rather fun side-effect: people wearing a piezoelectric jacket, talking on bluetooth cell phones -- talking to themselves, and constantly twitching to produce enough electricity to keep the phone on. Next, we'll hear about new subdermal neck-implanted antennas whose performance is enhanced by moisture. Then, the streets will be full of twitching, drooling businesspeople talking to themselves.
Business Plan
1) Build electric vehicle ...
2) Get electricity from Hamsters
3)
4) Profit!
Greenest car since the Prius!
This time I am going to be an early adopter... Does anyone know where I can get 40 million metric tons of hamsters?
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Sharks are optional.
To power a red light LED.
And that is the basic single-wire nanogenerator.
1. Scale it up to more nanogenerators so 1 hamster could easily power a red LED laser pointer which would be attached to it's wheel.
2. Attach a larger nanogenerator jacket to a cat.
3. Generate endless amounts of energy.
4. Profit.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...will love using this new way of harvesting power.
The damn machines will be plugging in hamsters into their giant VR world and just kill us off. Oh man, I thought I'd be made redundant by a robot before a hamster!
Oops, how did this get here?
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Start with two. You'll have your 15 billion in anywhere from 6 to 12 months. You may experience living space issues and complaints form the neighbors, however.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I saw The Matrix and I know where this technology leads.
This is just the test run for the full scale model that they'll fit inside a straight-jacket that they'll put me in because I'm paranoid that they will do precisely that!
The outcome of my paranoia is its cause!
If you put the two contacts of a voltmeter on your tongue, you'll see a small voltage - because you'd have created a battery with the leads and your saliva. Why not just use the hamster's internal fluids to create a battery?
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
Last year I was offered the choice of working on this project, amongst others, for senior design at Georgia Tech. I chose another bizarre piezoelectric based project instead. I doubt that one will over make it on slashdot. BTW, ZL Wang is the man.
Those jackets probably keep hamsters safe while they jog at night.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
> I was taught it *takes* almost 1000 hamsters to make a jacket.
Wow, I didn't know anyone was dedicated enough to WoW to actually grind all the tanned hamster skins for that quest...
So this article is extremely exciting because it gives me an opportunity to get an idea out there that I've been trying to promote for years. We should switch from the unit of Horsepower to the unit of Gerbilpower. This makes sense when you think about how unwieldy the horsepower unit is when talking about things other than very large machines like cars and trucks. So instead of saying "My new Honda Civic has 140 Horsepower!" you could be saying "My new Honda Civic has 66 GigaGerbils" Oddly though, no one has really picked up my new unit of measure. But maybe, just maybe this new insight will help to further my brilliant idea.
Think about how much energy could be harnessed if they just hooked these things up to your mom! Now stop pondering how much time I spend "clicking the mouse".
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
27 seconds in the hamster throws someone an evil look; probably the sadistic bastard that put him in a jacket and started filming him.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
so think it'll cost more to feed the hamsters or pay for electricity the old way
A tech working in computer repair