SpinSeebeckEffect
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Orange Power Wellies convert all that dancin' to juice for your mobile
We're coming upon festival season again, and you know what that means -- Orange is dragging their solar energy tent to Glastonbury. This year, prepare to charge your mobile phone while checking out the acts at the John Peel Stage, courtesy of your new Power Wellies. Developed in partnership with GotWind, the soles of the boots collect heat all day and, using something called the Seebeck effect, this heat is converted into electricity -- electricity that can be used to recharge your phone later that night. As if you needed an excuse to dance in the first place! PR after the break. %Gallery-94553%
Researchers say "spin Seebeck effect" could lead to new batteries, storage
You know something's a long way from becoming an actual product when we're just talking about the discovery of an "effect," but a team of researchers at Keio University in Yokohama, Japan say that the so-called "spin Seebeck effect" they've discovered could eventually have some pretty big implications for all sorts of devices. According to Science News, the researchers found that by heating one side of a magnetized nickel-iron rod they were able to change the arrangement of the electrons in the material according to their "spins," which is the quantum-physics equivalent of the south-north magnetic axes in bar magnets. One of the big advantages of that, it seems, is that, unlike with electric currents, transferring information by "flipping spins" does not generate heat, which would let "spintronics devices" operate at higher speeds without overheating, and cut down on power consumption in the process.[Via Spintronics-Info, image courtesy Nature]
