Scientists light bulb with "wireless electricity"

[WhiteTara]

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-06/08/content_6215681.htm

This is just so incredible!

BEIJING, June 8 (Xinhuanet) -- Scientists may have signaled an end to electric cords and batteries when they lit a 60-watt light bulb from a power source seven feet away without using a physical connection. The researchers have named their concept "WiTricity" as in "wireless electricity."

MIT physicist Marin Soljacic started thinking years ago about how to transmit power wirelessly so his cell phone could recharge without ever being plugged in.

The problem with wireless power transmission is that broadcasting energy in all directions can be very wasteful because a vast majority of power ends up being squandered into free space.
snip
Instead of sound, the MIT physicists focused on magnetic fields. Most common materials interact only very weakly with magnetic fields, so little power would get wasted on unintended targets.

more interesting info

[aquart]

1. Yowza. Now they're going to own the nifty patents, not us.

[nashville_brook]

3. we coulda had it 100 years ago -- this was Tesla's vision

wireless electricity

[aquart]

4. Drat.

[Mugsy]

5. More than just "coulda", he build a string of towers.

Tesla built these towers all over the place to "broadcast wireless electricity", but there's no money in giving away "free electricity", so the idea when nowhere.

[nashville_brook]

18. had one of those weird experiences lately, where the familiar seems utterly foreign

i was relocated a lamp and realized i needed an extension cord to place it where it needed to be. i stood there with the too-short cord in my hand thinking "this seems so f'n 19th Century!" CORDS! electrical CORDS! what an inelegant means of delivering electricity! everything now is wireless -- why the hell are we still plugging things in to wall, that is fed by a breaker box, that is fed by another line that runs the length of the city? it's asinine.

[CGowen]

25. He was ahead of it's time ......... n/t

[Mugsy]

6. Tesla's "Flying Saucer"

Long after his death, scientists found a "working model" of an electric powered flying saucer. But batteries made it too heavy to get off the ground, and plugging it in limited the range to the length of the wire. That's when they realized it was intended for use with his broadcast wireless electricity!

[Mugsy]

7. Photo

I believe this is a photo of the model:

[ProgressiveEconomist]

22. K&R(no.5) Great Photos! Thanks. Do you have links to text to explain them?

[Mugsy]

30. The story goes that the blueprints were destroyed.

No one has ever confirmed, but blueprints/schematics of the device have never turned up (the drawings above are not detailed enough to reveal his secret) though Tesla documented everything in detail having been in numerous patent disputes with the likes of Westinghouse, et al.

In all probability, the schematics were destroyed to prevent them from ever getting out.

[sanskritwarrior]

31. LOL who is they?

This experiment was done at MIT, this is just a Chinese paper reporting on it.......It was American financed and designed with a Sebian in charge........

[Bucky]

2. Yippee! Now we'll have ambient electricity floating thru open spaces!

I'll bet there's absolutely no danger in that!
.

[Dogmudgeon]

8. Oops! Too late!

"Ambient electricity" has been the natural state of things for about five billion years. Thunderstorms, for example. The scientists at MIT have just found a new way to control it to some degree. And like a couple of the previous posts explain, Nikola Tesla was also working on it as long as a century ago.

--p!

[Odin2005]

11. Oh, but thats NATURAL, so that's OK. *Sarcasm*

:sarcasm:

[Solon]

26. I wonder if Bucky knows that our brains generate enough electricity to power a 20 watt light bulb?

As long as the amperage is small enough, less than I think 30 milliamps, its safe for humans. I could be wrong on the amps though, it could be lower, watch Mythbusters a lot, and they use that figure as the "stopping" point for the heart.

[formercia]

9. Now you won't have to heat your house to stay warm in Winter

We're still working on the issue of using electricity in Summer. Check back later.

[RC]

10. The same principle that allows this to work also rings

the bell in the POTS. Plain Old Telephone. Otherwise there would be no way to get enough power through the miles of #20 or so wire from the telephone exchange to your telephone to even make a ding. And yet several mechanical bells in the older phones can be rung at the same time.
The secret is in the Resonant circuit.
This principle will never be viable on a large scale because the power falls off with the square of the distance. Twice the distance, 4 time the power loss.
In most cases you might as well just plug it in. This is Science Fair stuff.

[formercia]

12. That's why high-permeability Iron Core Transformers work so well

at low frequency and ferrites work so well at high frequency. They keep the magnetic field confined so that the energy from the primary is coupled efficiently to the secondary.

Air has a very low permeability.


If you want efficiency without a connection, the primary and secondary have to be in very close proximity.

My great Grandfather owned a regional telephone company. When my Father was a teen, he and his Brothers did an experiment to 'steal' electricity from the power company. The power company was leasing space on the telephone poles to run their grid, so dad used unused pairs of wires on the poles as a linear transformer to couple power from the electric lines to the phone wires. It was inefficient, but the network provided enough power to run several light bulbs. They ran it for several Months until the power company found out about it and made them take it down.

[Mugu]

13. My buddy Tesla...

I'd be happy to charge your phone if you'll just come a little bit closer.

[originalpckelly]

14. OMG! THIS IS HUGE! THEY'VE DISCOVERED INDUCTION!!!!

Actually, no this isn't huge, and it's already in use in the Transrapid system and it's used to power the train.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_induction

Right now I'm trying to work on a way to power airplanes from the ground.

[Canuckistanian]

24. It's called inductive coupling - and it's used in lots of applications already

Charging heart pacemakers. Charging electric cars. Listening devices that don't need batteries.

There's even an inductive communications system that goes through solid rock. They're looking into it for miners.

It's bulky. It's inefficient.

The only news here is if they managed to increase the directivity and therefore, the efficiency.

[slampoet]

15. I did this in my living room with a VanderGraf generator when I was 10 years old!!!

[Canuckistanian]

17. Not the same thing

The Van de Graff generator uses electrostatic energy - lots of Voltage, very little current.

Not useful at all for powering anything.

[Matariki]

16. Very cool. Reminds me of Tesla's work. But gotta wonder -

how generating magnetic fields might affect our bodies and the world around us.

[TahitiNut]

19. I hope they convert Cheney's office and residence first,

:evilgrin:

[mudesi]

20. 40% efficiency?

Well why don't I just blast my A/C and turn on all the lights while I'm at it. :eyes:

[Nikki Stone1]

21. K & R

:kick:

[progressoid]

23. Oh man, this is really gonna fuck up the bees.

[Odin2005]

27. IIRC they recently found it was a pesticide that was fucking up the bees.

[progressoid]

28. Guess I should have included one of these:

:sarcasm:

[Odin2005]

32. DOH!

[karlrschneider]

29. Another perpetual motion-like concept. What horse shit.

...

[NuttyFluffers]

33. sweet! now i can walk around and zap people like Raiden!

or that guy from Big Trouble Little China.

pew pew!