Has your cell phone battery ever died on you because you forgot to plug it into the charger the night before? How does a wireless power source sound that can charge your phone as soon as you walk into your house. A few years ago, Marin Soljačić, an assistant physics professor at MIT, was woken up by the insistent beeping of his cell phone. Since he was so exhausted, he wished that the phone would charge by itself as soon as it was brought into his house. After that day Soljačić tried to find ways to transmit power wirelessly that could charge--or even power--portable devices such as cell phones, PDAs, and laptops.
So far, the most effective setup consists of 60-centimeter copper coils and a 10-megahertz magnetic field; this transfers power over a distance of two meters with about 50 percent efficiency. The team is looking at silver and other materials to decrease coil size and boost efficiency. "While ideally it would be nice to have efficiencies at 100 percent, realistically, 70 to 80 percent could be possible for a typical application," says Soljačić.
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
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4 comments:
This concept of wireless energy transfer has been around for years and even today we have not been able to fully master its potential. Through a physicist point of view this project begins with the concept of resonance, more specifically magnetic resonance. In which electromagnetic waves are created at the same frequency as the device being charged. But more importantly these waves are bound into a certain area, unlike radio waves that go into space. I believe that in the future this will be a vital technology to power the countless devices we use today.
I beleive that this source of wireless energy transfer would benefit a lot of people in many ways. Though the physics of both wireless energy transfer and wireless information travel are related, the percentage of the power that is received is only important if it becomes too low to successfully recover the signal. With wireless energy transfer, the efficiency is a more critical parameter and this creates important differences in these technologies.
I read sometime around the end of August that Intel was able to power a light bulb on stage with about 75% efficiency. While still in the early stages of development, its expected to be commercially available by 2050.
I wonder how the world would be different if Tesla was able to build his Wardenclyffe Tower and if wireless power would be an everyday thing today.
Found the article and I'm not allowed to edit my comment so here it is:
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jn6duu12s7ujb6ByZ1wuv389gooQ
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