Posted on 05/21/2013 2:21:17 PM PDT by NYer
Called the supercapacitor, this revolutionary device can charge cell phones within 20 seconds. The brainchild of 18-year-old Esha Khare of Saratoga, California, the lucky teen collected $50,000 at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix, Arizona this week.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholic.org ...
Is there a working model of this device?
My impression is that this capacitor is supposed to replace the battery in the cell phone (in other words be the battery) and that the capacitor can be charged in 20 seconds - but that is unclear...
...and the litigation lawyers break out in song and dance.
It’s called “Make money by charging batteries so fast they catch on fire”.
That makes more sense. But capacitors are limited in the amount of energy can store by their physical size. I used to know the formula to calculate the capacitance given a number of dimensions, but that is long forgotten.
I have a rapid recharger for some rechargeable batteries I use often. They first drain the charge, then charge 4 batteries at once, in about 10-12 minutes. There is a fan constantly blowing air across these batteries. they get very hot even with airflow. After charging is over the fan will still keep going for 10-15 minutes if you don’t remove them.
They get very, very hot, even across 10-12 minutes and a dedicated fan to keep them cooler. 20 seconds, I just see fires starting.
Better dead than Crimson. GO MIT!
I find that objectionable. But I'd bet 47% of the population will see it just that way.
A capacitor that can store enough energy with reasonable leakage can be used as a “battery”. The primary difference being batteries exchange energy between chemical and electrical to store energy efficiently while the capacitor simply stores an electrical charge directly without any chemical conversion. Batteries are used simply because they have much higher power densities verses current super capacitors. Maybe she’s made a major improvement on that.
The device is a nano-technology based capacitor that replaces the rechargable battery in a cell phone.
Look for cell phones to start exploding soon :o)
Look for cell phones to start exploding soon :o)
my first thought
Web search for “lithium battery fire” to see what will happen if you do this to your cell phone.
If she’s invented a new form of magic cap, that would be nice, but I wouldn’t use it to charge my phone. Maybe to replace the battery *in* my phone, but that’s another matter.
As a side exercise ... consider this - think about circumstances and events where the media has reported on something you actually know about. How poor was the reporting?
And yet people trust the media to report to them on things that they don’t know about directly with any amount of accuracy or clarity???
For capacitors it is all about plate surface area and distance between electrodes (the thickness of the dielectric between the electrodes). I think the limits are primarily due to materials and methods to maximize surface area.
When I was in high school we used to go to military surplus sales to buy capacitors from radar power supplies, which we would charge up with flashlight batteries, and then leave sitting on desks and counters...
Actually, her father is an engineer who works for Intel!
http://www.patentbuddy.com/Inventor/Khare-Manoj/437721
Sounds fishy
SuperCapacitor Bump!
Just don’t lick them.
She's from Saratoga. That's a ritzy area. More likely her dad is a Silicon Valley executive or a professor at Stanford.
Well, I’m all in favor of young people being recognized for scientific accomplishments, but you don’t have to be Einstein to find this story long on hype and short on facts, with regard to the device she “invented”.
Supercapacitors are hardly new: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercapacitor
and while it’s possible that an 18 year old discovered something that hundreds or thousands of engineers and researchers working in this field have overlooked, wouldn’t it have been interesting if the report had talked about that?
But I guess that’s the difference between Catholic Online and, say, Nature or Science...
Bizarre question/assumptions. Here in my town we have a very similar situation -- East Indian high school girl also working in the area of nano technology. Just qualified for the national science fair. May have met this young lady by now. Both parents are scientists at a national laboratory.
Just buy a new battery from Boeing.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.