Wireless Energy
Scientists seem to have figured out a way that they could bring us wireless energy so that batteries would be, well, pointless. I had actually been thinking about wireless energy for a while now. In fact, I believe that Collin and I even made a joke about radiating everybody to do it a while back.
The tangle of cables and plugs needed to recharge today’s electronic gadgets could soon be a thing of the past.
US researchers have outlined a relatively simple system that could deliver power to devices such as laptop computers or MP3 players without wires.
The concept exploits century-old physics and could work over distances of many metres, the researchers said.
It would work with something called resonance. Another coincidence is that about a week or two ago my math teacher, Mr. Lemei, had a little extra time before class one day and showed us a physics model that showed what resonance was. Cool stuff.
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November 20th, 2006 at 2:57 am
It sounds like a really interesting concept, it’s funny though how with power always it though about electricity, rather than energy, by the common people; resulting in saying wireless energy would never be possible.
When this will actually be ready for production and viable to use still remains the question, one thing is for sure though, if all receivers could use the same transmitter this would definately be awesome, what I get from the article though is that it is tunneled to one device instead of spread, now ofcourse that’s not really what I want; replacing 10 power cords with 10 transmitters :).
November 20th, 2006 at 11:49 am
The interesting thing is that the scientists don’t think it would be hard to do. I mean, they didn’t actually invent a new theories or anything, but rather just kind of realized that they could do it with resonance, which has been around in physics for a long, long time.
As far as the transmitters go, what if there could be one sort of “hub” that would transmit on multiple “radio stations” so to speak, so that you’d only need one transmitter per room or even per house?
My question is with the receivers. How big would they have to be compared to the thing they’d power? I mean, it would be lame if it was half the size of the cell phone or laptop it was powering. Hopefully it wouldn’t have to be that big.
November 23rd, 2006 at 10:39 pm
i just read a little article on this and it seems that places could just have sites that you put your electronic device next to, and it charges it. it seems really neat and it explains how it works, something about how energy radiates at a certain level but too much radiation would be bad to humans, so they had to find a balance. damn, i wish i knew where i read this cuz my memory is failing me…
November 23rd, 2006 at 10:47 pm
found it! its in the latest Economist. they say that using magnetic fields instead of electric fields is more efficient and safer to transmit electromagnetic energy. so one electric field in the ceiling per se, could provide power to an entire room when a receiving device is placed on the electronic. they say they’re still working on having more efficiency than 40% so hopefully the transmitters wont be too big/inconvenient and still work correctly. and hopefully be cheap enough to buy.
November 24th, 2006 at 12:05 am
So, there’s two possible methods then? Resonance or magnetism. Hmm. Both are pretty cool, and we all know that it’s all about getting the job done as hip as possible. On the one hand, I could set up musical instruments to play notes depending on how much electricity is being used. On the other hand, if I had an entire room magnetically charged, then we could potentially have the coolest magnetic k’nex set ever.
I’m trying to find the article you’re talking about on The Economist’s web site, but I’m not having much luck. If I can get my hands on it, I’ll dedicate another post to it. :D