harvesting energy

[Chris Leonard]

On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 7:23 AM, Kristen Eisenberg <
kristen.eisenberg at yahoo.com> wrote:

> If we're talking about kids powering their own devices, I think the
> way to go is to turn "work" into play. The merry go round/hard bar
> swing would fit in this category.
>
> So basically, let's look at activities where energy exerted is ambient
> anyway? What I mean is that the energy is being used up by the kids
> anyway, so why not tap into those. An example is to give them some
> variant of those "dance straps" meant to power cellphones before they
> go off to run and play during recess and lunch break.
>
> One way to tap into this would be to create new playground
> installation toys which can be used for harvesting energy.
>
> Q: how much abuse can a kinetic energy harvester withstand? A soccer
> of basketball has a lot of kinetic and impact energy bouncing around.
> I'd imagine that's too much abuse though, and whatever harvesting
> mechanism would break from the forces.
>
> Would piezo work there?
>
>
>
FYI, this is exactly the concept behind PlayPumps for water pumping.

http://www.playpumps.co.za/

cjl
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