Re:15-year-old girl invents flashlight powered by the heat o...
by fjarlq on Saturday June 29, 2013 @02:52PM
(#5963395)
From her project description[1]:
My objective in my project was to create a flashlight that runs solely on the heat of the human hand. Using four Peltier tiles and the temperature difference between the palm of the hand and ambient air, I designed a flashlight that provides bright light without batteries or moving parts. My design is ergonomic, thermodynamically efficient, and only needs a five degree temperature difference to work and produce up to 5.4 mW at 5 foot candles of brightness.
5 foot candles is about 54 lux.
30 to 50 lux is minimal illuminance for reading.
My objective in my project was to create a flashlight that runs solely on the heat of the human hand. Using four Peltier tiles and the temperature difference between the palm of the hand and ambient air, I designed a flashlight that provides bright light without batteries or moving parts. My design is ergonomic, thermodynamically efficient, and only needs a five degree temperature difference to work and produce up to 5.4 mW at 5 foot candles of brightness.
5 foot candles is about 54 lux. 30 to 50 lux is minimal illuminance for reading.
[1] http://www.googlesciencefair.com/en/projects/ahJzfnNjaWVuY2V...