Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technologies with
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello there, everybody,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot Com,
Speaker 1: sitting across from me as usual as senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Hey there, everybody. Alrighty, you know we have a lot
Speaker 1: of energy going into today. We sure do. I tell
Speaker 1: you there's nothing like a live show to get you
Speaker 1: pumped up for two hours of podcast recordings. Really, someone
Speaker 1: kill me. So you're rethinking, then, huh, I'm always rethinking.
Speaker 1: Okay then okay. So, but yes, we were talking about energy.
Speaker 1: Well that that kind of leads into our topic for today.
Speaker 1: We wanted to talk a little bit about wireless power
Speaker 1: and whether or not it's actually possible and it is. Okay,
Speaker 1: So I hope you enjoyed this week's episode of We're
Speaker 1: going to go into a little more detail than that. Now,
Speaker 1: wireless power. This is not a new idea by any
Speaker 1: stretch of the imagination. It actually dates back almost as
Speaker 1: far back as a as as the transmission of electricity
Speaker 1: itself years ago. More than that, going a little further back.
Speaker 1: All right, so you're you're going to talk about our buddy,
Speaker 1: aren't you. We are we are going to talk about
Speaker 1: your friend and mine, Nicola Tesla, who is apparently number
Speaker 1: nine on the top ten. He is number nine on
Speaker 1: top ten inventors of all time. That this is an
Speaker 1: inside joke that no one outside of like five people
Speaker 1: are going to get. But that's okay. So Nicola Tesla
Speaker 1: Tesla was the father of the alternating current. Yes, and
Speaker 1: in fact, Tesla invented many things. I was a brilliant,
Speaker 1: brilliant man whom kind of suffered a little bit of
Speaker 1: a breakdown in his final years, actually eyed penniless despite
Speaker 1: the fact that he invented alternating current. In fact, um
Speaker 1: he had a famous rivalry with Thomas Edison. Uh Thomas Tessa,
Speaker 1: of course, the inventor of direct current and um and
Speaker 1: Tesla actually managed to land a lucrative deal. Um in
Speaker 1: a way, he landed the chance to provide electricity to
Speaker 1: the World's Fair in Chicago. That was a big deal.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course, that the entire world's attention was
Speaker 1: directed on this city and m so Tesla very well. Uh,
Speaker 1: he's famous for for a lot of things involving electricity
Speaker 1: for a good reason. But one of the things he's
Speaker 1: also famous for is something that still comes up in
Speaker 1: debate in scientific circles as to whether or not he
Speaker 1: was brilliant or crazy. And this was the idea of
Speaker 1: broadcasting electricity. Yeah, that's uh, that's saying seems a little weird,
Speaker 1: especially in our very very wired world. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: we think wireless. You're thinking you know, Bluetooth deo ways
Speaker 1: where you know WiFi? Yeah, maybe a little Marconi style
Speaker 1: you know, over the air FM, yeah, something like that.
Speaker 1: You know electricity, Yeah, you don't necessarily think electricity. If
Speaker 1: you're thinking over the air electricity, you're thinking lightning. Right.
Speaker 1: But you may have heard of these devices known as
Speaker 1: Tesla coils, which can put off quite a bit of electricity,
Speaker 1: some high voltage electricity, and can even be used as
Speaker 1: musical instruments. Yes, architect does a great act with Tesla
Speaker 1: coils from creating music. But don't get in the way. No,
Speaker 1: unless you're in a fair day cage, stay far away
Speaker 1: from the Tesla coils because they could kill you. Um So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's for the well grounded audience. Yeah. But but one
Speaker 1: of the things that Tesla tried to create was he
Speaker 1: did this project in Colorado is warden Cliff was the
Speaker 1: name of the project. It was an enormous Tesla coil tower,
Speaker 1: and the idea here was that he was going to
Speaker 1: use the resonance of the earth to broadcast power um
Speaker 1: throughout the atmosphere and this would eliminate need for infrastructure
Speaker 1: like cables and wires um. It never really worked. The
Speaker 1: part of the problem is that he ran out of
Speaker 1: money midway through the project. His investors pulled out when
Speaker 1: they thought that he was being Depending on who you asked,
Speaker 1: some people say they pulled out because they thought he
Speaker 1: was crazy. Other people say that that they pulled out
Speaker 1: because they were worried that it was going to affect
Speaker 1: um other financial um UH endeavors down the line, the
Speaker 1: idea being that there will be no way to monetize
Speaker 1: this because Tesla would have found a way to provide
Speaker 1: energy essentially for free, and that did not make people happy.
Speaker 1: Who you know, depended upon energy UH as a means
Speaker 1: of making money. So depending on who you asked, they
Speaker 1: either thought he was crazy or they thought he was gonna.
Speaker 1: They were going to bankrupt him, and they pulled out
Speaker 1: and he was unable to finish his project. There were
Speaker 1: reports that he had supposedly been able to um too
Speaker 1: light several light bulbs that were twenty six miles away
Speaker 1: from his tower, but that's unsubstantiated at any rate. Tesla
Speaker 1: kind of comes up with this idea about broadcasting power,
Speaker 1: never really comes to fruition, he dies penniless, and then, uh,
Speaker 1: no one's really able to necessarily replicate the Tesla's ideas.
Speaker 1: He didn't leave very good notes, so it makes it
Speaker 1: very difficult to try and figure out exactly how he
Speaker 1: was designing this and whether or not it would work
Speaker 1: for real zies. Yeah, it's yeah. Actually, that's one of
Speaker 1: the things that makes him so much fun to, uh,
Speaker 1: to study, is that he is so enigmatic and you know,
Speaker 1: hard to duplicate the experiments and just that whole you
Speaker 1: know Tesla mystique plus it's you know, electricity seriously, and
Speaker 1: and he did have he did have some very well
Speaker 1: documented quirks. He was he did have some signs of
Speaker 1: obsessive compulsive disorder. He was frequently washing his hands and
Speaker 1: he didn't to touch other people. And um, he also
Speaker 1: reportedly suffered from hallucinations, very vivid hallucinations throughout his life.
Speaker 1: And um, so there are other elements to his psyche
Speaker 1: that that bring into question, you know, how how sane
Speaker 1: his ideas were towards the end of his life. However,
Speaker 1: we we now skip ahead and wireless power is a reality. Um,
Speaker 1: there's with limitations. What's funny because people, um, this was
Speaker 1: all the rage at c S a couple of years ago. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about this new way of charging up
Speaker 1: your cell phone or your iPod by laying it down
Speaker 1: on a on a mat instead of plugging it into
Speaker 1: the wall. And everybody was talking about how cool this
Speaker 1: idea was. And it is cool, absolutely cool at least
Speaker 1: in my opinion. Um, because you don't have to mess
Speaker 1: with your your wiring and and finding the right adapter.
Speaker 1: You could just lay it down and it's charged. But uh,
Speaker 1: you know it's funny because snagging it and knocking the
Speaker 1: phone off the counter. Yeah, only the cat, you know,
Speaker 1: knocking the cat off the counter. Oh, the cat knocking
Speaker 1: the phone off the counter. I gotta know. So anyway,
Speaker 1: actually I suppose you would. I mean, if it's not
Speaker 1: tethered to anything, then it's going to hit the floor
Speaker 1: at least, but dangling anyway, you're not gonna get caught
Speaker 1: on the cord anyway. With the Tesla thing, you know,
Speaker 1: the whole putting it that totally puts it into contact.
Speaker 1: You go, wait a minute, if you could, if he
Speaker 1: was experimenting with this long ago, you know, maybe this
Speaker 1: isn't such a new thing. But there are different ways
Speaker 1: to to transfer power this way. I mean, it is
Speaker 1: possible to do, especially over short distances, but it sort
Speaker 1: of depends on what you want to charge and how
Speaker 1: you're going to do it, and how much electricity you
Speaker 1: actually need to to ferry over from one side of
Speaker 1: the other. Right, this isn't the same thing as as
Speaker 1: broadcasting enough electricity to power your home. This is talking
Speaker 1: about very small uh distances. Actually, usually it's a contact thing.
Speaker 1: It's wireless, but but to two different elements are normally
Speaker 1: in contact with one another, although not always, not always, no,
Speaker 1: we'll get to that, but them. A common example is
Speaker 1: if you have an electric toothbrush that you would put
Speaker 1: into a little cradle and that's what allows it to charge,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't plug in. It's you know, the cradle
Speaker 1: is smooth, and the bottom of the toothbrush is smooth,
Speaker 1: and you just stand it on the in the cradle
Speaker 1: and and it charges seemingly by magic, but it's not magic.
Speaker 1: There are no lebri cons involved. It's simply um, no elves,
Speaker 1: no electromagnets, that's the only no elves. But electromagnets are involved.
Speaker 1: So it charges through a process called induction. And uh,
Speaker 1: it all depends on electro magnets. We talked about electromagnets
Speaker 1: not that long ago, when we were talking about e MPs.
Speaker 1: That's true, that's true. Um. Basically, an electromagnet is a
Speaker 1: piece of iron wrapped with many many many times with
Speaker 1: a coil of copper wiring. Basic form of an electromagnet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: when you run a charge to it, it becomes an
Speaker 1: inductor and creates a magnetic field around there. Right, So
Speaker 1: if you were to take a nail and you were
Speaker 1: to wrap a copper wire around it several times and
Speaker 1: then connect either end of the copper to a battery,
Speaker 1: you would create a magnetic shield and you could pick
Speaker 1: up iron filings that way. Pretty much. Anyone in a
Speaker 1: in a physics class or or you know, even elementary
Speaker 1: school has done this sort of thing before, but it
Speaker 1: has many many other applications in the real world. Of course. Um,
Speaker 1: you've probably seen the videos of the Junkyard where you've
Speaker 1: got the giant electromagnet that you know, picks up a
Speaker 1: car and moves it from one stack to the to
Speaker 1: another or into the car crusher or whatever. Um. Probably
Speaker 1: virtually one third of all cop chase scenes in the
Speaker 1: city and in somebody driving into the thing and getting
Speaker 1: their car picked up the other the other two thirds
Speaker 1: usually a pool. So um, but yeah, so and and um,
Speaker 1: yeah you're I'm kidding, but you know that that's the
Speaker 1: famous scene. And that's an electric bagnet that people will
Speaker 1: be familiar with. Also, they're uh, they're used in the
Speaker 1: little sections under the roadway when you pull up to
Speaker 1: a stoplight, they detect car using a similar mechanism, right,
Speaker 1: And so you can use electricity to create a magnetic field.
Speaker 1: What you might not know is you can also use
Speaker 1: a magnetic field to create electricity. And that's that's the
Speaker 1: basis of this inductor, this wireless charging um technology that
Speaker 1: we're talking about right now. So within the cradle, that's
Speaker 1: the part that plugs into the wall. So you're drawing
Speaker 1: electricity from your your your wall. Uh, that is sending
Speaker 1: electrons through an electro magnet in the cradle. When you
Speaker 1: put the toothbrush in there, the toothbrush and it's base
Speaker 1: has another essentially another coil inside of it. The magnetic
Speaker 1: field will induce electricity within that coil and charge the
Speaker 1: battery inside the toothbrush. Same thing for the cell phones
Speaker 1: things of that nature, where it's using basic it's based
Speaker 1: off the same technology where you're using this magnetic field
Speaker 1: to induce electricity and that in turn charges a battery.
Speaker 1: That seems very simple. It's it's actually a pretty simple concept.
Speaker 1: It's it's difficult to explain without graphics, so it's a
Speaker 1: little difficult to talk about it without you know, looking
Speaker 1: at something. But it's nice of you to hold up
Speaker 1: the drawing to the microphone so everybody listening can see it.
Speaker 1: I hope you all appreciated that. It was you know,
Speaker 1: I I even actually I have a whole three D
Speaker 1: model here here, look at this and this over here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that totally makes sense to me, I know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't it It's so clear. So yeah, that's that's the
Speaker 1: main way we use wireless power right now. But there
Speaker 1: are other ways that people are working on that use
Speaker 1: a similar technology, but it's meant to transmit power in
Speaker 1: a larger area. UM. So, for example, some guys that
Speaker 1: in my t are working on this this coil that
Speaker 1: has capacitors at the end of UH. It's think of
Speaker 1: it like a think of a circle where you have
Speaker 1: one arc of the circle cut out, Okay, so it's
Speaker 1: not a complete circle. On either end of the that arc,
Speaker 1: there's a little capacitor and then you have the coil
Speaker 1: wrapped around it. And the idea here is that by
Speaker 1: creating an by running electricity through one of these, you
Speaker 1: create a magnetic field, and if you have another UM
Speaker 1: device that another arc that resonates at that same frequency,
Speaker 1: you can broadcast electricity in a greater areas because it's
Speaker 1: depending upon not just the magnetic field but resonance. So
Speaker 1: if you if you can get the two objects to
Speaker 1: reson excuse me, to resonate at the same frequency, UM,
Speaker 1: you can broadcast power. Yeah, basically, it's that that's sort
Speaker 1: of UH. I think if you're if I'm understanding you correctly,
Speaker 1: you're talking about radio charging and that's and that does
Speaker 1: have to that does mean that they have to match
Speaker 1: up and that actually are Managing editor Julie sent us
Speaker 1: an article not too long ago about that very thing. UM.
Speaker 1: Nokia is working on a technology in one of their
Speaker 1: United Kingdom offices UM. According to The Guardian, UH, this
Speaker 1: technology would basically use frequencies five mega hurts to ten
Speaker 1: gigger hurts, which is the same basically as UH area
Speaker 1: of which you'd find UM wireless land, bluetooth, mobile phones,
Speaker 1: microwave ovens, UM and UH. It would convert electromagnetic energy
Speaker 1: into electric electrical energy. UM right now can handle about
Speaker 1: five milliwatts. They're trying to get twenty, but fifty would
Speaker 1: be really powerful enough to recharge a cell phone battery
Speaker 1: and then thereby you wouldn't even need to worry about
Speaker 1: plugging in your phone or finding an induction pad on
Speaker 1: which to place your phone when you get home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you can with one of these systems if you
Speaker 1: if you were to perfect it, you could have a
Speaker 1: single UM powered coil that provides enough of a magnetic
Speaker 1: field to charge multiple objects all at the same time.
Speaker 1: So you would you could have like a room in
Speaker 1: your house which was the charging room. You know, you
Speaker 1: just leave your camera on your phone and MP three
Speaker 1: player or whatever and there, and then they charge just
Speaker 1: based upon the power being drawn by that one uh
Speaker 1: that one coil. So it's a pretty cool idea. And
Speaker 1: it's not the only way that we can do wireless power.
Speaker 1: There's another way which involves microwaves. Oh yeah, you can
Speaker 1: beam microwaves at a rectifying antenna or a rectanna if
Speaker 1: you prefer. It's not a joke. It really is a rectanna.
Speaker 1: I'm not treating it as a joke. It's just funny
Speaker 1: to me how people like to combine words and make
Speaker 1: new ones. Yes, it's it's it's catching. Is this you know,
Speaker 1: it's every Every business has to have its own jargon.
Speaker 1: So uh yeah, if you rectanna can can accept incoming
Speaker 1: microwaves converted into electricity, and this could become very useful
Speaker 1: if we can perfect a way of gathering energy in
Speaker 1: outer space to beam down to the Earth, because when
Speaker 1: you think about it, a lot of people would imagine
Speaker 1: the Earth as a closed system. You're getting only so
Speaker 1: much energy out of the environment, but it's not really
Speaker 1: closed system because you've got sunlight coming in all the time.
Speaker 1: But beyond that, if you were able to create say
Speaker 1: a satellite that had solar cells on it and could
Speaker 1: collect sunlight without the the interference of atmosphere and then
Speaker 1: beam that energy some way down to the Earth. You
Speaker 1: would suddenly have a very uh useful form of um,
Speaker 1: you know, an ending energy. Now, there are some problems
Speaker 1: with it. I mean, obviously you have to create a
Speaker 1: device that can beam a microwave beam at a very
Speaker 1: specific location. You have to have the antenna there to
Speaker 1: pick up the beam. Some people are worried about the
Speaker 1: idea of microwaves hitting the Earth all the time. There
Speaker 1: was a discussion of possibly putting an entire solar farm
Speaker 1: on the surface of the Moon, but of course the
Speaker 1: Moon is not always facing the same part of the
Speaker 1: Earth all the time. So in order to get the
Speaker 1: beam to the right set uh antenna, I suppose either
Speaker 1: you could build a series of antenna's or you would
Speaker 1: have to have some sort of reflective satellite network so
Speaker 1: that the beam hits a satellite and that in turn
Speaker 1: beams it to another satellite until you have a direct
Speaker 1: line of sight on the proper antenna, and then you
Speaker 1: could beam the energy down to Earth. So it's not
Speaker 1: obviously it's not the most perfect system. Also, another problem
Speaker 1: is that if anything were to happen to the solar
Speaker 1: panels on the Moon, you'd have to have some way
Speaker 1: to fix them. So there's a good chance that you
Speaker 1: would need either some sort of really advanced robot or
Speaker 1: more likely some sort of lunar base in order to
Speaker 1: maintain the solar panel farm. Um. Otherwise, you know, something
Speaker 1: goes wrong and then suddenly you're you're perfect source of
Speaker 1: energy is no longer so perfect. Yeah, but it's funny
Speaker 1: because you talk about things like can we convert electromagnetic
Speaker 1: spectrum into electrical energy? Well, you know, light from the
Speaker 1: Sun carries quite a bit of electromagnetic energy, and we
Speaker 1: use solar panels to do just that. Yeah, they're not
Speaker 1: terribly don't think about that as being but that's it's
Speaker 1: kind of the ultimate and wireless power because you think
Speaker 1: about all the plants that use the Sun's energy. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's wireless power. But uh, yeah, solar panels are not
Speaker 1: the biggest problem we have with solar panels right now
Speaker 1: is that they're not as efficient as we need them
Speaker 1: to be in order to to really get the most
Speaker 1: out of them. That I think the efficiency is down
Speaker 1: in the like the the teens are the twenties maybe,
Speaker 1: so that's pretty low. That means that you're losing eight
Speaker 1: of the energy that you could be harvesting if the
Speaker 1: technology were perfect. But it has increased significantly in the
Speaker 1: past a few years because we've done so much more
Speaker 1: research on it. Yeah, and of course the push towards
Speaker 1: green technology over the last few years has has, you know,
Speaker 1: spurred on even more research and development as companies see
Speaker 1: a way of possibly making a profit off of this.
Speaker 1: I mean, you've got people who are willing to pay
Speaker 1: two make make their lives more green and environmentally friendly.
Speaker 1: And once you start making sure that the whole process
Speaker 1: is economically viable, than usually the research and development quickly
Speaker 1: follows behind. You know, I wonder if it's to be cynical,
Speaker 1: But yeah, I wonder if the market for UH copper
Speaker 1: stolen from street lights it's going to drop if we
Speaker 1: switch to all inductive and all resonant and all radio.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there will always be a market for jewelry
Speaker 1: that will turn your arm green. I I you know,
Speaker 1: you really are cynical. I'm just saying I've I've got
Speaker 1: some nice jewelry that turns my skin Green, it's not
Speaker 1: as nice as it could be. I guess we'll see
Speaker 1: if I ever give you a penny for your thoughts.
Speaker 1: So thought Green talking about the the microwave transmission again,
Speaker 1: just really quickly. One of the neatest um potential uses
Speaker 1: I've seen for this technology is for a an airplane
Speaker 1: that would never land. That reminds me, but they might
Speaker 1: be giants song. Well, this would be an unmanned vehicle.
Speaker 1: I was wondering, what you're gonna do, you know, an
Speaker 1: unmanned drone. But it would it would convert. It would
Speaker 1: have a rectana on the on the plane itself, and
Speaker 1: you would be microwaves to the plane and that would
Speaker 1: give it enough energy for it to maintain its flight.
Speaker 1: And if you were to have enough you know, devices
Speaker 1: here to be microwaves to it, it could fly indefinitely. Alright,
Speaker 1: So do you have anything else on wireless power today? No?
Speaker 1: But I do have something else you do? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have a little a listener mail. This listener mail comes
Speaker 1: from Sergio. Sergio says folks. He said that Linux is
Speaker 1: a derivative of Unix, but Linux is a recursive acronym
Speaker 1: that stands for Linux is not Unix, just like Canoe,
Speaker 1: which stands for a canoe is not Unix. Linux may
Speaker 1: look and feel like Unix, but it is not Unix.
Speaker 1: It was mostly written from scratch, and the Colonel probably
Speaker 1: shares little if no code with a T and T Unix.
Speaker 1: This is all about patent copyrights and being free slash
Speaker 1: open source regards. Sergio. Sergio, we totally understand where you're
Speaker 1: coming from, and and we're not arguing that. What what
Speaker 1: we were trying to get at is that Unix spawned
Speaker 1: the or we should say Unix inspired Minics, right, which
Speaker 1: was a project that a college professor created to create
Speaker 1: an open source UM operating system that people could fiddle
Speaker 1: with the code, and then Torvalds saw Menics and that
Speaker 1: took from that the inspiration to create uh linux. So
Speaker 1: you well, it's not a direct derivative of Unix Unix
Speaker 1: inspired Menics, which in turn inspired linux UM. We were
Speaker 1: kind of using shorthand in that particular episode and possibly
Speaker 1: in the process made it less accurate than than it
Speaker 1: needed to be. At the time, though, we were worried
Speaker 1: about getting too technical and losing all the people who
Speaker 1: had never heard of Linux to start with. But thank
Speaker 1: you for writing and keeping us on us definitely, and
Speaker 1: a couple of other people made the same sort of point,
Speaker 1: and uh we we heard all of you. Um I
Speaker 1: just read Sergios because it was a good representative email.
Speaker 1: So if you guys have any comments, you would like
Speaker 1: to make, any questions or suggestions, criticisms that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: you can write us. Our email address is tech stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com. You can read all
Speaker 1: about wireless power at how stuff works dot com, along
Speaker 1: with hundreds of other topics, and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon for moralness and thousands of other topics.
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