6 ms·

At what current?

dragontamer 9y ago
Well, current is Coulombs / second. The smaller the amount of time, the higher the current. I think your real question is, how many Coulombs. Because it isn't very much energy to transfer 100 Amps for a femtosecond. ---------- Overall, they need to say how many Watts does it generate. There are multiple circuits to arbitrarily convert voltage into current and vice versa. The real difficult part is creating a sustainable source power. --------- Now that I think of it, a mechanical paper "compression" that generates electricity would be a very interesting sensor. There are a lot of piezoelectric stuff out there already (crystals and buttons and stuff). But if there's a way to easily create a peizoelectric sensor from a 3d printer, that'd be good news. Current / power isn't very important for sensor applications. (Detecting whether or not something is bending over or whatever)
- todd8 9y ago
  Thanks for your insightful comments. I hadn’t thought of sensors as an application and wondered about what this would be good for.
- squarefoot 9y ago
  That would make a truly interesting development, like body movement tracking and other sensing technologies. If that's the direction, then I agree that power generation becomes irrelevant.
delecti 9y ago
Probably quite low, given this quote from the article. > the current was still too low for most practical applications
- starshadowx2 9y ago
  That was for the first version, the next paragraph states: "At the suggestion of a colleague, they tried connecting the gels through a Miura-ori fold, a type of origami fold that allows the gels to stack on a folded sheet. The gels connect simultaneously with a large contact area, more closely resembling the geometry of the eel’s cells. This method increased the current and prevented energy waste by decreasing the time it took for the gels to connect."
  - squarefoot 9y ago
    Yet they didn't specify how much current the cell produced, which makes the 110 Volts claim completely irrelevant by itself. I would get a 10 Volts at 1 Amperes cell any day over a 110 Volts at undisclosed amount of current one. Current is important as much as voltage. A slipper and a carpet would generate thousands of Volts at very low current as well; by rubbing both feet on the carpet one would generate roughly twice the current, and a crowd doing the same would raise the current by orders of magnitude; still all that energy could not move a toy car by a single millimeter. That research is undoubtedly interesting, but it rather pertains to the "we're emulating how electric eels produce electricity" than the "we're solving the planet energy problems".
kazinator 9y ago
... and for how long!!! volts * amps * time = energy / work capacity
- ReverseCold 9y ago
  And that's why you measure batteries in Watt hours and not Amp hours. Silly mobile power bank makers.

At what current?

Well, current is Coulombs / second. The smaller the amount of time, the higher the current. I think your real question is, how many Coulombs. Because it isn't very much energy to transfer 100 Amps for a femtosecond. ---------- Overall, they need to say how many Watts does it generate. There are multiple circuits to arbitrarily convert voltage into current and vice versa. The real difficult part is creating a sustainable source power. --------- Now that I think of it, a mechanical paper "compression" that generates electricity would be a very interesting sensor. There are a lot of piezoelectric stuff out there already (crystals and buttons and stuff). But if there's a way to easily create a peizoelectric sensor from a 3d printer, that'd be good news. Current / power isn't very important for sensor applications. (Detecting whether or not something is bending over or whatever)

todd8 9y ago
Thanks for your insightful comments. I hadn’t thought of sensors as an application and wondered about what this would be good for.
squarefoot 9y ago
That would make a truly interesting development, like body movement tracking and other sensing technologies. If that's the direction, then I agree that power generation becomes irrelevant.

delecti 9y ago

Probably quite low, given this quote from the article. > the current was still too low for most practical applications

starshadowx2 9y ago
That was for the first version, the next paragraph states: "At the suggestion of a colleague, they tried connecting the gels through a Miura-ori fold, a type of origami fold that allows the gels to stack on a folded sheet. The gels connect simultaneously with a large contact area, more closely resembling the geometry of the eel’s cells. This method increased the current and prevented energy waste by decreasing the time it took for the gels to connect."
- squarefoot 9y ago
  Yet they didn't specify how much current the cell produced, which makes the 110 Volts claim completely irrelevant by itself. I would get a 10 Volts at 1 Amperes cell any day over a 110 Volts at undisclosed amount of current one. Current is important as much as voltage. A slipper and a carpet would generate thousands of Volts at very low current as well; by rubbing both feet on the carpet one would generate roughly twice the current, and a crowd doing the same would raise the current by orders of magnitude; still all that energy could not move a toy car by a single millimeter. That research is undoubtedly interesting, but it rather pertains to the "we're emulating how electric eels produce electricity" than the "we're solving the planet energy problems".

kazinator 9y ago

... and for how long!!! volts * amps * time = energy / work capacity

ReverseCold 9y ago
And that's why you measure batteries in Watt hours and not Amp hours. Silly mobile power bank makers.