Scientists Harvest Nano-Power From Hamsters

Al writes "Researchers at Georgia Tech have come up with the ideal way to test a new peizo-electric device that efficiently harvests power from bio-movement — attaching it to a hamster. The device contains a series of zinc-oxide nanowires mounted on top of a flexible plastic surface. As the plastic bends, the wires generate around a nanowatt of power. The Georgia Tech team, led by Zhong Lin Wang, wanted to show that their device could produce power from irregular movements so they attached it to a tiny hamster jacket. They also tried attaching it to a volunteer's finger. Here's a video of the hamster wearing his piezo-power outfit."

Uh oh...

[Jaysyn]

I hope no one tells Minsc!

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[CannonballHead]

awww... I miss BG :(

Re:

[Jaysyn]

Well go play it. It's not like it won't run on WINE. Even better, play BG1 in the BG2 Engine.

http://www.pocketplane.net/mambo/index.php?option=content&task=blogcategory&id=143&Itemid=98 [pocketplane.net]

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[duckInferno]

Go for the eyes, Boo, go for the eyes!

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[duckInferno]

Haha, I just realised I still have a Minsc quote in my age-old sig.

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[Bemopolis]

Hell, I just hope no one tells Richard Gere.

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[Jurily]

Go for the eyes, Boo!

Finally

[atomicthumbs]

Someday soon we'll be able to power our computers with armies of hamsters!

Re:Finally

[snowraver1]

First you would need about 15 billion hamsters for a low power notebook. Your desktop/monitor would likely take around 400billion hamsters (.4 terahamsters) or assuming an average mass of 100g, 40 million metric tons of hamsters.

Re:Finally

[mr_mischief]

It wouldn't take nearly so many if you just burned the hamsters as fuel, but then you'd be better off to just burn the pellets instead of feeding the hamsters.

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[JK_the_Slacker]

Pellets don't reproduce like exploits in Microsoft software, though.

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[Gabrill]

Yes, but you could _eat_ the hamster meat, and burn the carcass, ending up with a tasty positive!

Thats it.

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

This time I am going to be an early adopter... Does anyone know where I can get 40 million metric tons of hamsters?

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[Anonymous Coward]

This raises a very important question.

How many terahamsters are in one burning library of congress per second?

And is there a non-SI unit for power yet? If not, I nominate terahamsters.

No Problem...

[Kozar_The_Malignant]

Start with two. You'll have your 15 billion in anywhere from 6 to 12 months. You may experience living space issues and complaints form the neighbors, however.

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[Sponge Bath]

Will the notebook do 0.5 terahamsters past light speed?

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[DrSkwid]

I don't remember posting this. Well done !

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[hesaigo999ca]

We shall start by using this new system as a way to gauge how much power is
needed for something...4 terahamsters for this, 2 terahamsters for that....I LIKE IT!

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[CaptainPatent]

We finally can put Lemmiwinks back to work!

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[aliquis]

No-one haven't written "imagine a beowulf cluster of nanopowergeneratingjacketwearing hamsters"?

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[jallen02]

One of the genuinely GOOD uses of the meme and what??? no mod points. How far has /. fallen? :>

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[Petrushka]

Well, I guess there are now forty-three ways to generate power from a hamster [cmu.edu].

I'm kind of hoping that this research is in reference to that old list ... my favourite was always number 41.

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[wooferhound]

These people wired a generator to a Hamster Wheel and the hamster makes enough power to light up a nightlight.
http://www.otherpower.com/hamster.html [otherpower.com]

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[wooferhound]

and . . .
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/27/0536212 [slashdot.org]

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[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[Blue Stone]

Isn't this how Planet of the Apes began? [youtube.com]

Great, but..

[StikyPad]

Wouldn't it have been more efficient to attach a generator to the wheel?

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[snowraver1]

Perhaps. It's well known that the most efficient way to get power from a hamster is to use them as a fuel source for a conventional boiler/turbine combo.

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[geekoid]

Way to miss the point.

Perhaps a tiny bowler hat too?

[niro5]

I am most intrigued by the idea of hamsters wearing jackets.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

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[geekoid]

Would you settle for a three piece suit?
http://www.amazing-planet.net/slike/sidekick/penfold.JPG [amazing-planet.net]

Well...

[denzacar]

Those jackets probably keep hamsters safe while they jog at night.

Works with popcorn?

[ND4SPDR]

Does it work even if he's just eating popcorn on a piano? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfqNXADl3kU [youtube.com]

Weird Ed disapproves!

[eddy]

...I'm pretty sure... [youtube.com]

Surprised

[DavidR1991]

I'm surprised it has taken this long for a technology like this to come around. Not the hamster part, but the generation of electricity via small/random body movements. Considering we've had self-winding/kinetic watches for a while, I'm surprised this took so long to materialise.

How many hamsters to power a lightbulb?

[Anonymous Coward]

So you need 100 billion hamsters to power a 100 Watt lightbulb.

Fantastic achievement. NEXT!

But only 28

[denzacar]

To power a red light LED. [wikipedia.org]

And that is the basic single-wire nanogenerator.

1. Scale it up to more nanogenerators so 1 hamster could easily power a red LED laser pointer which would be attached to it's wheel.
2. Attach a larger nanogenerator jacket to a cat. [youtube.com]
3. Generate endless amounts of energy.
4. Profit.

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[esampson]

How many to power the laser on a frickin' shark?

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[denzacar]

Too many for any practical use as a weapon system.

Whales on the other hand...

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[InverseParadox]

...but tomorrow is Friday...

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[Weedlekin]

With figures like those, a renewable power system based on this particular hamster technology would lead to a serious shortage of hamsters, so this could well be a good time to invest in both hamster futures, and buy shares in companies that offer serious hamster alternatives for those whose needs will no longer be served by a visit to a pet store.

Here's a link to a company whose shares might be about to skyrocket if this technology is adopted by (for example) the Chinese government. I'm not affiliated with

I was expecting a hamster wheel...

[Zakabog]

I was expecting a hamster wheel being used as a generator and thought "Really? That's something new?"

This technology seems a lot more useful as long as they can get it to scale up nicely. It'd be nice to be able to charge a cell phone from the clothing you wear.

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[Jaysyn]

Yeah, but what happens when you get caught out in the rain in this stuff?

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[geekoid]

That's an industrial problem, and solvable.

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[Garridan]

Then you harvest some nanopower from the raindrops falling onto your jacket.

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[geekoid]

Embedded it in your portable device.

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[Chris Burke]

I was expecting a hamster wheel being used as a generator and thought "Really? That's something new?"

This technology seems a lot more useful as long as they can get it to scale up nicely. It'd be nice to be able to charge a cell phone from the clothing you wear.

Plus, if you're the kind of person who likes to give your hamsters a better home by making those big tube fortresses, then your hamster will be generating power all the time rather than the relatively lesser amount of time they'd be on the hamster wh

Hamster

[sexconker]

Isn't it easier to just strap a traditional generator onto the hamster wheel?

Re:Hamster

[tilandal]

Sure if you plan on powering your MP3 player or phone by walking in a giant wheel.

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[sexconker]

They don't call it the rat race for nothing.

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[Hucko]

So tell me why is that energy going to waste? More specifically, why haven't you *already* connected your treadmill to an inverter system?

Thank God I don't do exercise so I don't have to answer difficult questions like that.

think about

[gEvil (beta)]

Think about how much energy could be harnessed if they just hooked these things up to slashdotters forearms. It's mindboggling!

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[denzacar]

Wristbands with multi-wire nanogenerators.

Slashdot alone could probably power a continent or two.

Obligatory

[drinkypoo]

Think about how much energy could be harnessed if they just hooked these things up to your mom! Now stop pondering how much time I spend "clicking the mouse".

No....I don't belive it!! It's not possible.

[RetroRichie]

The hamster generates more bio-electricity than 120-volt battery and over 25,000 BTVs of body heat. Combined with a form of piezo-electricity, the humans have found all the energy they would ever need. There are stores...endless pet stores, were hamsters are no longer born. We are grown. For longest time, I wouldn't belive it...and then I saw the fields with my own eyes. Watch them liquefy the dead, so they could be fed intravenously to the living. And standing there, facing the pure horrifying precision, I came to realize the obviousness of the truth. What is The Matrix? Control. The Matrix is a computer generated dream world, built to keep us under control in order to change a hamster into THIS.

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[zentinal]

Of course, today, of all days, I do not have mod points. Bravo, RetroRichie. Bravo.

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[Fry-kun]

LOL
Bravo, well played! :D

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[afxgrin]

This would make a great Southpark episode.

Wierdest /. summary quote evar

[idontgno]

"tiny hamster jacket"

Seriously, that phrase would almost win a googlewhack [wikipedia.org] except for the actual occurance in /.

Is this

[SnarfQuest]

Is this part of the "boxed data center" package? I know they are including power genertators, but I didn't think that it would require massive amounts of hamster food.

The future is now!

[Garridan]

This will have a rather fun side-effect: people wearing a piezoelectric jacket, talking on bluetooth cell phones -- talking to themselves, and constantly twitching to produce enough electricity to keep the phone on. Next, we'll hear about new subdermal neck-implanted antennas whose performance is enhanced by moisture. Then, the streets will be full of twitching, drooling businesspeople talking to themselves.

Sweet!

[i_am_socket]

Business Plan

1) Build electric vehicle
2) Get electricity from Hamsters
3) ...
4) Profit!

Greenest car since the Prius!

The Matrix bots...

[fortunato]

...will love using this new way of harvesting power.

So much for the Matrix

[IgLou]

The damn machines will be plugging in hamsters into their giant VR world and just kill us off. Oh man, I thought I'd be made redundant by a robot before a hamster!

I'm paranoid because I'm paranoid

[SinGunner]

This is just the test run for the full scale model that they'll fit inside a straight-jacket that they'll put me in because I'm paranoid that they will do precisely that!

The outcome of my paranoia is its cause!

wouldn't blood battery be more efficient?

[Fry-kun]

If you put the two contacts of a voltmeter on your tongue, you'll see a small voltage - because you'd have created a battery with the leads and your saliva. Why not just use the hamster's internal fluids to create a battery?

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[Peeteriz]

Seeing a small voltage != being able to extract that voltage for any significant power.

Power = voltage * current. Most of such biobatteries have very, very insignificant current ratio.

Could have worked on this

[cheechdurden]

Last year I was offered the choice of working on this project, amongst others, for senior design at Georgia Tech. I chose another bizarre piezoelectric based project instead. I doubt that one will over make it on slashdot. BTW, ZL Wang is the man.

Watch the video

[Shrike82]

27 seconds in the hamster throws someone an evil look; probably the sadistic bastard that put him in a jacket and started filming him.

feed

[jackymiles]

so think it'll cost more to feed the hamsters or pay for electricity the old way