Water-powered clock is here to save the environment
By Joshua Fruhlinger 
posted July 15th 2008 6:03AM
posted July 15th 2008 6:03AM
[Via Cool Hunting]
posted July 15th 2008 6:03AM
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This should come in a metal casing. In black. With a fuse coming out of the filler cap. Then I will take it traveling with me so I can meet all the nice TSA folks.
Also doubles as a handy desert survival device. Drink the water, and then you won't have a clock taunting you with how long you've been trudging through those endless dunes...
It doesn't sound like it's powered by water, instead water acts as an electrolyte. The power is stored in the electrodes.
So if it were to be powered by the electrodes, will it last long, or will it go flat in a while?
It's like a car battery. You know how your battery can go "dead", but you can just drain it and replace the acid before charging it?
Well the acid is the electrolyte; the electrons aren't actually removed from the electrodes, so they don't 'go bad'/'run out' of power so you replace the electrolyte and the battery springs back to life!
I have never drained and replaced the acid in my car battery. I just try jumping it when it dies. If that doesn't work, I buy a new one.
(Then I bring my old one out into the woods somewhere and bury it in a shallow grave. Let nature take its course. That's what I say.)
The electrodes are consumed by the reaction. Given time they will need to be replaced.
It is a "salt water battery" the salt water causes corrosion on the electrodes which are made out of materials like copper and zinc or magnesium or something. These materials are reactive enough in salt water to generate a small electro-chemical reaction. The salt water is not where the energy comes from, it's the electrodes. The electrodes will eventually wear out, so really those are the batteries. It's likely it will take a long time for them to wear out though.
Using salt water for the reaction is going to create a really low-power battery because it's not reactive enough for a reaction like in most batteries. However, clocks like this only need a tiny tiny amount of energy (which is why a wrist watch can last years on a button cell battery). So it is enough to power the clock. It's kinda like those "potato clocks" if you have ever seen those.
The energy comes from the electrodes, which took energy to refine because these materials are not generally found in nature because they are so prone to corroding.
Water cannot conduct electricity; the dissociated particles, electrolytes, are what allow charge to flow. Pure water does not conduct electricity. That's why the original description of the product requires the addition of salt.
Wes is the closest to right. When a battery runs, one of the electrodes shrinks (loses ions) and the other electrode grows (gains ions). In the end, one electrode will eventually "dissolve" and the other will look anodized, as if it were plated.
I have no idea how this product works, but the explanation must be pretty creative.
I don't think this reaction increases the size of electrodes, if anything the electrode size is already staggered from the start. The reaction "dies" when the electrodes reach equilibrium. A cell does work when electrons are being transferred, so when equilibrium hits a very small amount of electrons are being transferred.
All you lame-ass scientists need to read the brilliant Engadget explanation more carefully:
"Powered by electrodes immersed in water that extract energy from compound particles.."
No, not "compounds", and no again, not "particles", this thing is powered by "compound particles".
Or maybe cold fusion.
Refining pure copper and zinc is more environmentally damaging than burning coal, much much more than nuclear or hydro.
We have one of these (a different model ofc) at my school, and has had for at least 3 years.
Sry for spelling.
Why didn't you just spell right if you thought there were spelling errors? It takes more typing to apologize for mistakes than it does to fix them.
Maybe he's not an native English speaker, or something of that sort, who knows? Why's it necessary for you to take the time out of your life to reply? It only snowballs and means I have to take time out of my life, and now someone's going to reply to this and waste THEIR time. Just imagine if we could take all the time anyone's ever used to dial in to a BBS or go on IRC or post on a forum or comment on some form of story and convert it into those people riding a bike hooked into their local electrical grid? Then maybe we wouldn;t be in the salt-water-clock mess we'd be in now!
"But if you still have a power-guzzling alarm clock that plugs into the wall, for shame, you glutton!"
But this isn't an alarm clock you glutton!!!
"But if you still have a power-guzzling alarm clock that plugs into
the wall, for shame, you glutton!"
But this isn't an alarm clock you glutton!!!
Cool, I wonder how many power it can extract from the water, could it make sound(alarm)?
I purchased a $5 watch about 10 years ago that ran off water (or, I should say, electrolytes). Neat but impractical and outdated.
If you don't water it, does it die?
I've seen clocks like this that drew power from odd sources like potatoes, soil, etc. It's an interesting concept, but what do you do when mildew develops inside the clock?
Yes, let's throw out all of those old alarm clocks- just chuck 'em into landfills- and rush out to buy these amazing new environmentally friendly water clocks!
I agree. This has always been a sicking point for me.
Is it really environmentally friendly to get rid of perfectly good X to buy much more efficient Y.
I believe these sorts of things should be examined before the decision's made.
That said- if you need a clock- why not get this one?
Does that mean you could run it on Brawndo: The Thirst Mutilator? It has electrolytes.
I mean, who wants to run a clock on water? Like, from the toilet...?
wow, I'm not the only person who's seen that movie? That was the dumbest movie ever.. but soo funny.. buttf*ckers LOL
sold.
Thinkgeek has had a water powered clock for over 2 years, but it requires some type of removable, replaceable cartridge. Does this have something similiar?
Could you piss in it, and would it still work?
As that would be more environmentally friendly :)
It cost $16.00 not $19.00............
not buying this product and using your phone instead = saving money AND clearly saving the planet from certain demise, clearly.
Or not. Remember, those crazy environmentalists are always telling us that cell radio waves are harming the environment and causing cancer ;)
Looks kind of small...more like a water powered stopwatch
What will happen when we have Water Wars?
On a side note; I'm going to find me a sundial.
Aren't environmentalists big on water conservation, too? 'Wasting' water to power a clock probably isn't big with them.
Maybe if it ran on salt water, since we're not running out of that for a while, but I can't imagine salt water being very good for an electronic device like this.
Hope you're joking...on the chance you're not:
This doesn't consume water. It does in fact run on salt water...the water from your tap is not pure H20. The statements about it requiring energy to refine copper and zinc, or whatever the electrodes are, are correct, but there's not even a remotely significant water conservation issue here.
And on the copper and zinc...zinc is cheap and widely available, it's commonplace to plate steel with it and current US pennies are just copper-clad zinc. In any case, it's better than most battery chemistries out there, and the requirements are tiny. The amount of power this sort of cell could provide is extremely tiny, which means the electronics have to be incredibly efficient...likely operating in the nanowatt to microwatt range. This *is* definitely something to approve of.
And guys, neither electrode gets plated during the discharge of the cell. If the copper got plated with the zinc, you would end up with a zinc electrode and a copper-cored zinc electrode, and no power. What happens is that the zinc electrode gets oxidized by oxygen in the water, the resulting hydrogen ions being neutralized by electrons provided at the copper electrode...if an electrical circuit between the electrodes is provided, electrons flow from the zinc electrode to the copper one. The zinc is consumed, turning to zinc oxide and potentially reacting further with whatever salts might be in the water. The copper is unchanged.
Electrochemical plating occurs in rechargeable batteries, but it's typically not material from one plate being plated on the other, it's material from the electrolyte. Some chemistries involve more complex processes...lead acid batteries for example...but none of that is involved here.
Or...
You could do one better and instead of buying a clock online that you need to have shipped to you and fill with drinking-quality water and salt, until the electrodes wear out (which by the way took energy to refine the materials for)..
You could just buy a feakin wind-up clock. You know they've made those for centuries and you can still get them. They don't even contain any "e-waste" issues because they're made of gears and cogs.
Better yet... get an old one at a flea market or something and re-use it, thus eliminating the packaging issues and energy used to make a new one.
Having an electronic, blister-packed clock shipped on a FedEx aircraft to your home and then throwing out the packaging and putting water in it completely negates any potential gains for the enviornment it creates many many times over.
Cool,
Only I've had one on my desk for 4 years. Not really new technology, but its cool (:
If you guys are honestly buying this for the environmental benefits, that's a little sad. If you're willing to throw out your perfectly good alarm clock that takes about 1 watt-hour a day, then you better be retreating to a cave to make up for the rest of your energy consumption. Turning on even an energy-efficient lightbulb for 4 seconds takes more power than this.
Neat little clock, but only for the "bragging rights", if you will. This would do very close to nothing for the environment.