Wait until Al Gore hears about this…
As if it weren’t irritating enough to have to listen to people on their mobile phones, a South Korean team has just given people an excuse to yell into them even more loudly.
Dr Sang-Woo Kim, of Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul, has devised a technology that allows phones to be charged simply by talking to them – and the louder the noise, the more quickly the phone will charge.
The system works by transforming sound into electrical signals. The sound causes the pad on top of the phone to vibrate, compressing and releasing tiny zinc oxide wires which then generate current.
“A number of approaches for scavenging energy from environments have been intensively explored. The sound that always exists in our everyday life and environments has been overlooked as a source,” he says.
“This motivated us to realise power generation by turning sound energy from speech, music or noise into electrical power.”
Kim says the technology could also be used on a larger scale through the installation of sound-absorbing walls alongside major roads. These could not only generate electricity, but would have the added advantage of reducing noise levels.
Does this mean car mufflers will be outlawed?
Except really, is Larry that different from us? Sure, he’s got some dusty old computers lying around. And he accumulates crap on them. He has 3,552 emails in his Gmail account! MY GOD. Except, I have 13,835. Am I also mentally ill? Nope! We both just use an email service with huge amounts of free storage—and computers built in the last half decade—which don’t give you any incentive to delete things. I have homework study sheets from 10th grade, history reports from 5th grade, countless stupid GIFs, a giant folder on my desktop of bookmarked articles I haven’t gotten a chance to read yet—do I deserve to have a psychologist question my ability to make decisions, like Larry? No. I rarely empty my trash either—because who cares?
