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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsUniversity of Michigan researchers unveil wireless 'charging room' system that powers phones, laptop
ANN ARBOR Imagine a world with no charging cables that keep our devices tethered to power outlets.
Researchers at the University of Michigan and University of Tokyo have invented a system that they say safely delivers electricity through the air. Their vision? To potentially bring wireless charging zones to entire buildings.
Using magnetic fields, the new technology can transfer up to 50 watts of power, according to the study published in Nature Electronics.
https://www.clickondetroit.com/all-about-ann-arbor/2021/08/30/university-of-michigan-researchers-unveil-wireless-charging-room-system-that-powers-phones-laptops/#//
GPV
(72,381 posts)Hugh_Lebowski
(33,643 posts)Also rather doubt the energy efficiency is nearly as good as plugging in.
Srkdqltr
(6,315 posts)I'm sure someone is working on it somewhere. With high winds and storms it would be useful.
sdfernando
(4,937 posts)see Nikola Tesla
634-5789
(4,175 posts)Been waiting for this for a long time.
jmowreader
(50,562 posts)In 1899 Tesla set up a lab in Colorado Springs to experiment with electricity at high altitudes. Tesla believed he could transmit electricity by vibrating the earth, so not sure what altitude had to do with it, but anyway there were lights outside the lab, and one day he noticed they came on during the day when he was using his induction coil. He believed the coil was vibrating the earth through the walls, which made the lights come on. It was actually that he had a 45-foot-diameter induction coil in there and the huge magnetic field was doing it.
sdfernando
(4,937 posts)This was way back in 1901!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wardenclyffe_Tower
jmowreader
(50,562 posts)Since Tesla thought electricity was a mechanical force, he drilled a 300-foot shaft under the tower and built tunnels leading out from it to hold the resonating elements he was going to make the earth quiver from. (The big steel tower was his return path
his customers would have needed a reception device with an antenna on top to complete the circuit.)
One of Teslas major problems was he was crazier than Donald Trump. Another one was he was as interested in paying his bills as Trump: he lost both the Colorado Springs lab and Wardenclyffe to foreclosure, and he was evicted from several hotels for nonpayment before George Westinghouse found out about it and paid his hotel bills for the rest of his life. If youd like to stay in Teslas final rooms, they are 3327 and 3328 at the New Yorker hotel. Itll cost $200 to $300 a night to stay there, and theres a waiting list for those two rooms.
Fun fact: Tesla didnt believe radio waves would bend around the curvature of the earth, so when Marconi managed to transmit Morse from Europe to the US using a grounded Tesla coil - the only way to generate RF at the time because the vacuum tube hadnt been invented yet - Tesla decided Marconi was using earth resonance too.
My favorite electrical pioneer was Oliver Shallenberger, who worked for Westinghouse. He was extremely important in electricity because he invented, among other things, the electrical meter. And strangely enough, until someone invented the digital meter Shallenbergers invention was never improved - his accurate mechanical meter was perfect just the way it was. He also invented the idea of putting transformers in street lighting, and built whole systems this way. I also like Oskar Heil, who invented the velocity-modulated tube used to generate microwave frequencies (the traveling-wave tube used in satellites is based on the Heil tube, and the Varian brothers klystron tube is similar to it) and the field-effect transistor your computer is full of.
multigraincracker
(32,714 posts)Will it charge up my pacemaker?
surrealAmerican
(11,363 posts)... hopefully figuratively - not literally.