Living as I do in the heart of London, I'm never far away from a wireless broadband signal. It's great. I hate wires. If only there were no need for them at all...An article in the latest edition of Physics World (which is fast becoming my favourite publication) has a piece about wireless electricity. Aristeidis Karalis, a researcher at MIT, explains how she and her colleagues have been trying to solve the problem of creating a useful electric field over short distances, which could make the tangly maze of cables in our homes disappear.
The group made an electric lightbulb glow without wires or a battery. The way they did it was to transfer energy between two resonating copper coils, creating an electric field at the same frequency as the bulb. The principle is similar to how an opera singer can break a wine glass if she hits the right note - she is transferring energy to the glass. The big problem was making it efficient so that they didn't lose more energy than they were transferring.
On the small, experimental scale on which they were operating, it was a success. Karalis said, "If our innovation is successfully commercialized, then the concept of a completely wireless world could soon leap from dream to widespread accomplishment."
1 responses:
Think how much fun the people who get worked up about phone masts and wireless networks could have with this one...
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