Surely you've heard by now that researchers at the University of Alberta figured out how to turn water into electricity? No?
Lucky you -- you haven't been subjected to the barrage of science illiteracy flooding the news.
Here's an article which actually explains the technology. It's a new method of generating electric current from a pressure difference; or if you prefer, converting mechanical energy to electrical energy.
Obviously energy is not created nor destroyed. Just as obviously, you need to have more energy available from the pressure than you get in the generated current. This is a direct consequence of the laws of thermodynamics: energy is conserved, entropy is increasing.
As it turns out, the process is only 1% efficient, which is to say that 99% of the energy available is lost. Compare this with the traditional method of converting pressure to current -- i.e., magnetic generators like those in dams -- which are over 90% efficient. Clearly some effort needs to be made here: microfluidics-powered cell phone batteries are not coming soon to your pocket.
It's still a cool technology, and it's still exciting. The University's press release actually has a pretty good perspective on it. It's a new way of generating current that hasn't been described in the literature before. But if you're only getting 1-2 microamps from 3/100 of an atmosphere, even if it scales linearly, you'd need 10 atmospheres to get 6 milliamps. And if the efficiency went up from 1% to 90%, you'd be getting .5 amps -- you could almost power my cell phone charger for that. Of course, you'll have to keep that head pressure sustained while you're drawing charge, so expect to take a pressure tank with you wherever you're going... oh, did you want to fly on a plane?
Nor labor either. Baby without labor would probably be nice, but labor without baby -- especially extended -- is not so nice, I've heard.
In other news: I called my doctor's office and asked if they wanted the stone I passed to analyze. They said they don't usually do that (WTF?) but they'll give me a call back when the doctor gets back into town. If they don't want it to analyze, I think I'll have it encased in lucite -- or else stuffed and mounted over the fireplace.
Sunday evening I spent an hour turning my wife's younger sister (my other sister-in-law) on to 80's rock. She mostly listens to country, but she's started to like country/rock crossover (Chris LeDoux), and so she wanted more stuff like that. She was nine, I guess, when Nevermind came out, so of course she has no memory of Bon Jovi, Van Halen, Def Leppard, and them all. I don't really appreciate them as much as I should: at the time, I was listening to new wave and punk. Only since we moved here have I realized that I really like 80's rock, and that's because the only radio station I can listen to here has a rock/hard rock format.
I also got something out of it: she loaned me a Toby Keith CD, and I finally got to listen to the famous "Angry American" song.
Back to work.