Just a thought... As I was working on my laptop at school, I noticed that hey, working in the park feels great. Wireless technology letting me work wherever I want, wireless mouse with no fuss on cables. When the need to surf the internet arise, I just plug my wireless network card and surf away. When I thought everything was good, guess what. The battery ran out. that's right. The batteries. The the thought struck my brains as if it was cheese slapped in a burger (riiiiight.......) What if we had wireless power? What if battery chargers are the thing of the past. No 3-hour limits on your laptops, no 8-hour limits on your PDAs, no 2-day limits on your camera-phones. What else could spawn from a wire-free dock-free limit-free power technology? ...then again, just a thought. The I went to the computer lab and (naturally) googled it. What I found was, It wasn't such a new idea at all. It even went back as old as 1891 by Nikola Tesla who experimented with wireless power. Too bad he did not have a chance to realize a bigger applicable version of his experiments. Here's one of the articles I found: http://www.tfcbooks.com/articles/tws8c.htm Also many researches are already working on it, some even claimed that the technology will be coming to our mobile gadgets sooner that we thought. Several things I have googled include wire-free electric mats that let you charge your laptop or any gadgets on top of it without being connected through any wires, and something about a tesla-light-bulb that lights if you screw it into the ground, I think that's one of Tesla's experiments. One of the most interesting subjects was a study in ZPE or Zero Point Energy, which is basically a theoritical realization of, yep, wireless power. The site: http://www.ldolphin.org/zpe.html Too bad I can't understand about 98% of the scientific terms. I'm sure all of you gadget-freaks like me came through this thought a couple of times. Just a thought...
Sorry for making you guys read such long babble. Okay, now the light stuff. What would you first apply wireless power technology on to? Not just laptops. I know I want one on mine.
Some scientists have been working on wireless recharge for electric vehicles. Basically you travel over a series of cherged strips on the road and at cretain speeds it created an induction loop. The power from this can be stored in bateries, and the vehicle is good for another fifty miles. I think you would have to run fairly fast with your laptop though!
There is a company that is already on top of that, with a very similar product which should be hitting stores this year. It is a pad, which you plugin, and it comes with batteries for various devices (PDA, cellular, MP3 possible, laptop, etc.). You buy the pad and the batteries, and whenever you place the device on top of this pad, it recharges the batteries. So, rechargeable batteries taken one step further, with the wireless. No cord charger, only one outlet in use to charge up multiple devices, etc. Popular Science has been following this product for about a year and a half or so. It's a small step, but nonetheless a step in the right direction. The company is called Splashpower, and the product Splashpad. And it actually looks cool too.
Apparently, from how it works, there is an electromagnetic field (based off of Tesla's earlier works with coils and such, heavily modfiied) that is picked up by the special battery sold by Splashpower, named the SplashModule. The Module converts the field to electricity, and recharges the battery. Here's the PopSci article:
That's the long and short of it right there. Self-contained battery cells - such as small-scale fusion cells or other things that haven't been invented yet - are more likely to provide nearly infinite power. Transmission of anything requires a medium, and the earth isn't a very good medium for transferring power like that. Neither, for that matter, is the air.
I'm gonna send this thread to my Physics teacher... he's one of those cool one's who'd get a kick out of a group of people spontaniously talking about physics. w00t!
I hate liars. I hate hypocrites. I hate haters. Now gimmie a hug.
Self-contained power will never happen, either. You can break that down into efficiency, nothing is EVER 100% effecient, and never will be. Self-Contained power, from what I gather, would mean never having to charge it. This would basicly mean that the device (or just the part that would make the energy) would have to not create noise, get warm, or be able to move, because energy would be lost.
Wireless power... Makes me wonder what radio signals could do ;)
Wait, actually, we have wireless power *points to sun* ;)
[If you have no prejudics at all, you don't seem to mind murderers, rapists, theives, terrorists, drug dealers, and other evil people, right?]
Capt. Kirk made like, a bazooka, out of sulfur, some gunpowder, and I think baking soda, that he just "happened" to find on a planet EXACTLY when he needed them. I swear to God.
Plus, Bones shwoed us how an ordinary microphone can be used as a cardiographic meter that can filter out heartbeats.
The whole food-magically-appearing-in-the-hole-in-the-wall on the ship was also galactically impressive.
Anything is possible.
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