Althouse: Witricity.

July 24, 2009

Witricity.

Wireless electricity. Not just Tesla's dream anymore.

14 comments:

john said...: Am I on Althouse or Instapundit?

hee.; 7/24/09, 2:01 PM
The Drill SGT said...: whether it's acoustic coupled or inductance coupled, my suspicion is that the energy loss across more than centimeters is a factor of 1/100 or greater.

IOW, a parlor trick but useless

Now microwave beam transfer has a loss rate of only 20% or so. Course if you step into the beam, you're looking at 2 headed kids as offspring :); 7/24/09, 2:05 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: Is this another way to skin a cat?; 7/24/09, 2:16 PM
traditionalguy said...: We still need to generate the stuff, don't we? this is merely an easie way to distribute it into virgin territory. So who wants a house without wiring?; 7/24/09, 2:20 PM
The Drill SGT said...: to be clear, I was saying that the effective energy transfer ould likely be on the order of 1% of broadcast energy; 7/24/09, 2:32 PM
Balfegor said...: It will be a weapon of terrible power! Behold and tremble!; 7/24/09, 2:33 PM
froggyprager said...: my hair is standing on end just thinking about this.; 7/24/09, 2:38 PM
chickelit said...: In a best case this will do away with a few wires, e.g., the ones we use to recharge/power a laptop when the battery gets low. It won't do away with the need for on board batteries for storage, for those moments when you step away from the grid.

Still, it's pretty cool stuff.; 7/24/09, 2:43 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: The kooks must be static.

All your base.; 7/24/09, 2:59 PM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: this is a tough crowd.; 7/24/09, 3:10 PM
Methadras said...: I'm shocked. Stunned. Can you feel the electricity in the air?; 7/24/09, 3:52 PM
rhhardin said...: The original boys' book of Raytheon's, things to do with your CK722, included a transistor radio powered, not by batteries, but by a crystal set, wired to take off the DC component rather than the audio signal.

A little jiggery can arrange it so the crystal set isn't even tuned to the same station you're listening to, thus using ABC's dime to power a radio tuned to CBS.

There's energy through the air, in the late 50s.

The nice part is that it really does suck energy out of the broadcast signal. You could probably heat your house with an array of thousands of crystal sets surrounding the local broadcaster's antenna farm, and reduce their program coverage area to a single neighborhood.; 7/24/09, 5:46 PM
NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...: How long until people freak out that the magnetic fields and radiation will fry your brain?

Or it will cause autism.; 7/25/09, 9:19 AM
raf said...: I hope it works. I want to recharge my car by driving slowly past my neighbors.; 7/28/09, 1:42 PM