December 12, 200520 yr Talk about a topic crying out for a more creative headline than "Urine-Powered Battery, The" Is there an Ig Nobel Prize in this guy’s future? I certainly wouldn’t bet against it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- December 11, 2005 Urine-Powered Battery. The By JOEL LOVELL In their quest to develop a smaller, cheaper battery for medical test kits - like those used to detect diabetes by analyzing a person's urine - scientists in Singapore had a eureka moment of sorts when they realized that the very urine being tested could also serve as a power source. In the September issue of The Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, Ki Bang Lee described how he and his team of researchers created "the first urine-activated paper battery" by soaking a piece of paper in a solution of copper chloride, sandwiching it between strips of magnesium and copper and then laminating the paper battery between two sheets of plastic. In this setup, the magnesium layer serves as the battery's anode (the negatively charged terminal) and the copper chloride as the cathode (the positively charged terminal). An electricity-producing chemical reaction takes place when a drop of urine, which contains many electrically charged atoms, is introduced to the paper through a small opening in the plastic. The scientists' largest prototype battery generated a maximum of roughly 1.5 volts, the equivalent of an AA battery, and sustained an average of about 1 volt for about 90 minutes. Lee explains that its uses could extend to any device that consumes a small amount of electricity. "For instance," he says, "we could integrate a small disposable cellphone and our battery on a plastic card, for use in an emergency. And we are continuing to develop batteries that could power regular cellphones, MP3 players and laptop computers." While Lee emphasizes that urine is the biofluid of choice (since "everybody produces large amounts of it"), he notes that other bodily fluids - blood, tears, semen and saliva - will work in a pinch. Copyright 2005The New York Times Company http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/magazine...eXfGjDHlEsBSL9Q If you really have a hankering to read the original paper, complete with illustrations: Urine-activated paper batteries for biosystems
December 12, 200520 yr Is nothing sacred anymore? That's really neat. And gross. At the same time. Sort of like a John Waters movie.
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