Once again a phrase 'Anything can happen in this world of technology'
has came true.. A 16-year-old girl Ann Makosinski had invented an
awesome technology in which, a Flashlight bulb can be glowed without
using any battery. A device that works on the heat generated by your
body from various internal processes.
While visiting a rural area, she found that many of the students cannot study only because of the shortage of light around them. As, there were no electricity to produce the enough light with which, they can study properly. So, to get rid of this problem, they have to find an another way to produce the light.
During this span of time, Ann read an article called 'A Human body can power 100W bulb..!', which encouraged her to go beyond the concepts of producing electricity. She looked forward working with electricity produced during heating and transferring it. As we all know the theorem of transfer of heat and electricity are same, i.e. Heat/Current flows from a point of high temperature/potential to a point at lower temperature/potential. Also, working with heat transfer, she came to know that, electrons move in random directions (same action happens when a battery is connected to a circuit) if heated, and flows from higher temperature end to lower, producing an effect of battery, this phenomena is called as 'thermoelectric effect'. At initial stage Ann started using Ceramic plates, one of which is heated while other is cold, to work as a charge stored capacitor.
Now, when these Ceramic plates get mounted on the wall of a flashlight, they will get heated due to heat produced by human hand holding that flashlight. The hollow cylindrical shape of flashlight will allow a free flow of air through it and will try to cool one of the plate. The heat will start transferring from Hot to Cooler plate and will excite the electrons to flow through them, this in turn, will set-up a current through it and will be responsible for glowing the LEDs connected to the plates. But, suddenly she recognized that, the wattage produced by these plates was 5.7miliwatts only, which was not sufficient to produce enough light. So, to boost up the Voltage produced by this flashlight, she has connected a transformer, which boosted the Voltage to 5V, producing enough energy to glow the sufficient LEDs to produce maximum light.
This invention made her to win an award of the winner of 'Google's International Science Fair' with $25,000 scholarship.
While visiting a rural area, she found that many of the students cannot study only because of the shortage of light around them. As, there were no electricity to produce the enough light with which, they can study properly. So, to get rid of this problem, they have to find an another way to produce the light.
During this span of time, Ann read an article called 'A Human body can power 100W bulb..!', which encouraged her to go beyond the concepts of producing electricity. She looked forward working with electricity produced during heating and transferring it. As we all know the theorem of transfer of heat and electricity are same, i.e. Heat/Current flows from a point of high temperature/potential to a point at lower temperature/potential. Also, working with heat transfer, she came to know that, electrons move in random directions (same action happens when a battery is connected to a circuit) if heated, and flows from higher temperature end to lower, producing an effect of battery, this phenomena is called as 'thermoelectric effect'. At initial stage Ann started using Ceramic plates, one of which is heated while other is cold, to work as a charge stored capacitor.
Now, when these Ceramic plates get mounted on the wall of a flashlight, they will get heated due to heat produced by human hand holding that flashlight. The hollow cylindrical shape of flashlight will allow a free flow of air through it and will try to cool one of the plate. The heat will start transferring from Hot to Cooler plate and will excite the electrons to flow through them, this in turn, will set-up a current through it and will be responsible for glowing the LEDs connected to the plates. But, suddenly she recognized that, the wattage produced by these plates was 5.7miliwatts only, which was not sufficient to produce enough light. So, to boost up the Voltage produced by this flashlight, she has connected a transformer, which boosted the Voltage to 5V, producing enough energy to glow the sufficient LEDs to produce maximum light.
This invention made her to win an award of the winner of 'Google's International Science Fair' with $25,000 scholarship.
