[LINK] Some shocking news about wireless electricity

[Eleanor Lister]

Linkers,

    i mentioned the content of this thread to a friend of mine who is an
electrical engineer by trade, and his take on it was:

    "Of course it could be used as a toy, but so can fibre optics and the
    photoelectric effect. There would be plenty of real applications. Some
    immediate uses for the technology would be to recharge batteries in
    things like pacemakers and surgically inserted monitoring devices, to
    power non-destructive testing probes in confined spaces, anything where
    you wanted a self-contained device to be somewhere where you can't
    readily get to it to recharge its batteries."


regards,
    EL

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Kim Holburn wrote:
> I've got an electric tooth brush.  I don't use it because I can't
> stand electric toothbrushes but I got it as part of something else. 
> It has such a cup arrangement.  Actually the cup is the toothbrush
> itself.  The holder has a sort of spike.  I assume for efficiency the
> induction transfer takes place at a higher frequency than 50Hz so the
> "transformer" coils can be much smaller.  The brush would just about
> completely surround the spike so there would be very little leakage of
> EMF if it were well designed.
>
>
> On 2007/Jun/13, at 2:42 PM, Stephen Loosley wrote:
>
>> At 11:57 AM 13/06/2007, Stewart wrote:
>>
>>> .  The best way to inductance charge an electric toothbrush would be
>>> to put it into a cup-shaped holder, where the cup was the primary coil,
>>> and the toothbrush had the secondary.  Then you'd have a holder and
>>> a closely coupled induction (high efficiency) system all in one.
>>
>> Ahh . yes .. imho .. excellent idea. Haven't taken such an item apart
>> and
>> don't use them actually, but, the electric toothbrushes I have seen
>> do not
>> appear to have any such 'cup' arrangement as you suggest, Stewart. :-)
>>
>> Although the current drain, per unit, would be small, it all adds up.
>> Surely
>> your idea would be a fine marketing point.  I wonder when our consumer
>> energy-star rating system will extend to such consumer items rather than
>> just the large consumer white-goods, which currently appears the case?
>>
>>> My problem is that I often don't know what month this is these days,
>>> let
>>> alone what date.
>>
>> By the way, it's 2007.. right? :-)

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Eleanor Ashley Lister
South Sydney Greens
http://ssg.nsw.greens.org.au
webmistress at ssg.nsw.greens.org.au