Let Water Power Your Mobile Phone

from the fill-'er-up dept

Roland Piquepaille writes "No, we are not April 1st. And no, this is not science fiction. The very serious Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering revealed last week that scientists have discovered a new source of electricity: "generating electric power by harnessing the natural electrokinetic properties of a liquid such as ordinary tap water when it is pumped through tiny microchannels." "This technology could provide a new power source for devices such as mobile phones or calculators which could be charged up by pumping water to high pressure," said Professor Kostiuk, from the University of Alberta, where the technique was developed. But don't expect to power your cell phone with pressurized water anytime soon. My blog contains some excerpts from the article."
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  • identicon
    dorpus, 20 Oct 2003 @ 11:27am

    Just about anything

    can act like a weak battery. Remember all those high school science fair projects with potato-powered watches? That spawned the late 80s marketing craze of spud this and spud that.

    link to this | view in chronology ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.