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Potato-Powered Batteries Debut
MojoKid writes "Yissum Research Development Company Ltd., the technology transfer arm of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has just introduced what it's calling 'solid organic electric battery based upon treated potatoes.' In short, it's a potato-powered battery, and it's as real as you're hoping it is. The simple, sustainable, robust device can potentially provide an immediate inexpensive solution to electricity needs in parts of the world lacking electrical infrastructure. Researchers at the Hebrew University discovered that the enhanced salt bridge capability of treated potato tubers can generate electricity through means readily available in developing nations."
Indeed. This article is painfully embarrassing.
Yep... 1.6 billion people are going to boil potatoes and place them between sheets of copper and zinc in order to light an LED. Who writes this stuff?
Boiled potatoes sitting around for weeks. It's a revolution!
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
NEWSFLASH - not everyone in developing nation is starving and short of food. For some, an alternative power source such as this is appropriate.
THANK YOU. That sort of mentality disgusts me. I stayed at a place in Belize near the Guatemalan border once, and that place is third world by anyone's definition. And walking down the streets you had to dodge the chickens and keep an eye out for falling mangoes. I'm sure that if they had a way to power their cell phone towers with mangoes and chickens (and other plentiful items, they'd be thrilled to do so.
The CB App. What's your 20?
What you say would be true only if potato production were limited to current levels and if there were no surplus. In fact, potato production could be increased to accommodate use for batteries, and in any case th ere is actually a surplus. Total world food production is adequate - the reason that some people starve is poor distribution of the available food, in considerable part due to political reasons. (Starvation in North Korea, for example, is the result of the incompetence of the country's government.)
Possibly because solar power is pretty big in Israel, so high tech batteries are in their best interest. And, just some baseless postulating here, but when you're surrounded by neighbors who don't much care for you whose biggest asset is oil, improving those alternative energy techniques might be a good idea. If Israel perfected solar power & storage, that could conceivably go a ways towards helping the world kick it's oil habit (solar powered batteries for your house and car), which would cut into the cashflow of said neighbors. So, batteries are good for them, and there is a chance that maybe possibly we're seeing some sort of scientific-economic-political strategy at work here.
Hell, many of them probably eat better than we do... less reliance on hyper-processed junk.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
You know, I can put up with a lot of idiocy before I start to suspect malice, but this has gone too far. A potato battery article on slashdot, "news for nerds"? Kdawson is officially a troll.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)