Schemes for ‘harvesting’ energy range from electricity-generating dancefloors to knee dynamos. But there is now a new option – patented last month by the Colgate-Palmolive Company (New York), the ‘Oral care implement with mechanical energy harvesting‘. During use, the invention employs piezoelectric devices to generate electricity from the stresses-and-strains caused by bending the toothbrush head […]
Tag: electricity
Commercial power generation: Not bug-free
This commercial for Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor claims [perhaps accurately!] to show that a few bugs can provide enough power to run the chip: [HT Ernesto Charles]
Where faces come from (a new view)
Dany Adams gave one of the first 24/7 Lectures (the Lectures are now a featured annual part of the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony). It was also one of the most memorable, culminating in Adams’s seven-word definition of BIOLOGY: “If it can get infected, it’s biology.” This week Adams [pictured here] published a study together with […]
Electricity and the colour of socks
What is the relationship between the colour of socks and their ability to generate static electricity? Those interested will find no better place to start their enquiries than the article: New Experiments and Obſervations Concerning Electricity, written by Robert Symmer, Eſq; F.R.S., back in 1759. Symmer was an independent amateur Scottish investigator – or what […]