California teenager invents device that can charge cell phone in 20 seconds - flat

Catholic Online ^ | May 20, 2013

[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.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic online) - The device is sure to make waiting around for your cell phone to recharge a thing of the past, In addition, the gizmo packs more energy into a smaller space than traditional phone batteries -- and holds the charge longer.

Khare traveled from her California home to Phoenix last week for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, where her invention was honored as one of two winners of Young Scientist Awards.

"I'm in a daze. I can't believe this happened," Khare, a senior at Lynbrook High School in Saratoga, she told reporters.

Khare has only used her supercapacitor to power a light-emitting diode or LED. She envisions a bright future that one day will see her invention powering cell phones, cars and any gadget that requires a rechargeable battery.

On her way to Harvard, Khare told TV journalists that this is only the start and that she will "be setting the world on fire" from here.

Specializing in nano-chemistry, Khare was able to reduce the size of her invention. "Really working at the nano-scale to make significant advances in many different fields," she says.
 
"It is also flexible, so it can be used in rollup displays and clothing and fabric," Khare added. "It has a lot of different applications and advantages over batteries in that sense."

Flexible and tiny, the supercapacitor is able to handle 10,000 recharge cycles, more than normal batteries by a factor of 10.

[steve86]

SuperCapacitor Bump! Just don’t lick them.

How else do you tell if they're charged?

[Libloather]

Where does it go - in the basement?

[who_would_fardels_bear]

I forgot the /sarc tag.

But I really didn't think I needed to add it.

[steve86]

Your formula would have to be updated to reflect the advances in nano chemistry.

[CodeToad]

...and tied to antenna wire tape on bathroom seats...or so I’ve been told.

[editor-surveyor]

From Boing?

[Blood of Tyrants]

Perhaps, but I remember the formula having the area of the plates, the distance between the plates, a constant based on the dielectric material, and possibly other variables.

[tomkat]

I was tempted to type  she's a doll, who cares if it works !

.. but that seemed kinda shallow, so won't be bringing down the tone of the thread by posting it.

i'm thoughtful like that

[Kirkwood]

Very clever...

http://www.usc.edu/CSSF//History/2013/Projects/S0912.pdf

[Bob]

Of course, to make this work, the charger applies 100,000 volts rather then the usual 24 or so.

Either that or you'll need car battery jumper cables to carry the current.

My cellphone uses a 1700 mAhr (1.7 Amp-hour) battery. To fully charge it in one hour, the charging current must be 1.7 amps. To cut the charge time down to a minute, the charging current must be increased by 60 times to 102 amps. Further reducing the charge time to 20 seconds would require a charging current of over 300 amps.

[steve86]

Notice that both energy density and power density were very good.

[DManA]

When did she “invent” this. I’ve been reading about supercapacitors for several years.

[DManA]

eg. http://www.wimp.com/supersupercapacitor/

[deport]

Khare's device, a black, rectangular type of supercapacitor just over an
inch long, can charge a cell phone battery in 20 to 30 seconds, she said.

"I developed a new supercapacitor, which is basically an energy storage device
which can hold a lot of energy in a small amount of volume," she told KPIX 5.
The technology may also be able to speed up charging of automobile batteries,
she said.

end snip

http://www.cnn.com/2013/05/20/tech/whiz-kid/index.html

Photo story

[zeugma]

Now, I can see the application used to store energy lost while braking in a car and then being released when you want to speed up.

That's a pretty good application for something like this. It would need more than 10,000 cycles though to be practical.

[zeugma]

...the lucky teen

i noticed that too. From a journalism major though, it's hardly surprising.

[lacrew]

“As a side exercise ... consider this - think about circumstances and events where the media has reported on something you actually know about.”

I’ve said this for years. They get basic stuff wrong - like what company somebody works at, or what address some place is. Its uncanny.

[zeugma]

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???

I've used this exact arguments to stimulate some light-bulb moments in folk who were drinking the koolaid. Everyone has at least one subject that they know a great deal about. If you can get them to think back to any reportage they might have seen in the past about that particular subject, the overwhelming response I've gotten from people is that the media got the story completely wrong.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Capacitors are good for virtually unlimited cycles. When they do go bad it is usually from dielectric breakdown.

[editor-surveyor]

The “Hot seat?”

LOL!