Potato-Powered Batteries Debut 284
MojoKid writes "Yissum Research Development Company Ltd., the technology transfer arm of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has just introduced what it's calling 'solid organic electric battery based upon treated potatoes.' In short, it's a potato-powered battery, and it's as real as you're hoping it is. The simple, sustainable, robust device can potentially provide an immediate inexpensive solution to electricity needs in parts of the world lacking electrical infrastructure. Researchers at the Hebrew University discovered that the enhanced salt bridge capability of treated potato tubers can generate electricity through means readily available in developing nations."
Re:food (Score:3, Funny)
Or they could just eat them...
With NEW Shockingly Great Taste!
Chips? (Score:4, Funny)
What's that you say, Senator Stevens? (Score:5, Funny)
It's not an electrical grid, it's just a series of tubers.
Re:Puff piece (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Puff piece (Score:5, Funny)
Re:food (Score:5, Funny)
Or they could just eat them...
+1 Insightful. If I am a 3rd world citizen, lacking food or means to purchase it, and I have some potatoes, and I am hungry and I have a flashlight or radio or whatever that needs juice, well, they are going to remain without power as I gobble down. Now if it was something like a person with an iPad, even if they are starving and impoverished, I think they would choose differently due to reality distortion fields. How they got the iPad I don't know, that is an exercise for the reader, and that reality distortion field is strong enough these days that there should be some sort of energy harvester for it in the works anyways.
Re:Puff piece (Score:5, Funny)
Re:food (Score:3, Funny)
I'm currently seeking a grant to build a reactor based around Steve Jobs.
Harvesting the power of the distortion field is paramount to ending the world's oil addiction. Unfortunately, as he grows old we will find a new source to power the reactor. The boys in the lab have cooked up a cocktail of pheromones, viagra, ginseng and amphetamines to ensure we have a healthy stock of potential reactor rods.
Re:Puff piece (Score:5, Funny)
Yep... 1.6 billion people are going to boil potatoes and place them between sheets of copper and zinc in order to light an LED
No, but I'd suggest that a few routinely go to similar lengths to do something better [wikipedia.org].
Cheers. ;-)
Re:Israel and batteries (Score:4, Funny)
Technology dependence (Score:3, Funny)
Great, now the potato famine can cause blackouts too.
Re:Puff piece (Score:4, Funny)
Re:food (Score:1, Funny)
They could use chicken treadmills. Do chickens eat mango? If so, two problems solved.