[manatee]

Got graphene?

More graphene wizardry:

Flowing salt water over graphene generates electricity | Ars Technica

 

[manatee]

This one sounds just like the new bottom paint/power producer I've been waiting for. Where can I order it? Will my solar charge controller work on this system, too?

Give 'em time. I'd use a bit of the power generated to discourage unwanted organisms from planting themselves on my hull.

From the subject line I was picturing very small children on treadmills.

I like that.

Just to be clear, "infant" in the following sense:

"Benjamin Franklin observes the first balloon ascension in 1783 while he was Ambassador at the Court of France. Someone asks "What possible use are balloons?" Franklin answers "What use is a newborn baby?"

Franklin did observe the first balloon ascension on Nov 21, 1783 staged by the Montgolfier Brothers. Franklin may have said this, though there's no specific documentation."

 

[manatee]

I have a morbid fascination with these technologies. I know they are far from prime time, but can't stop reading about them.

Don't understand: why the 'morbid'? Sounds as though you have an active curiosity.

Not so long ago, electricity, horseless carriages and motorized boats weren't "prime time", but look at us now.

 

[manatee]

Morbid in that most of them are DOA.

Maybe...maybe not. How do you know? It took the guys at Edison's labs over 1,000 tries to find a commercially-viable electric-light filament. New technologies require time and work to reach maturity, they don't spring out full-grown as Athene does from Zeus' head.

Exactly...
A few years ago i read an article about a new battery technologie that used carbon fibres in a polymere fabric so that it was also structurally sound and could take loads... It was mentioned that volvo would use it as the hold for the spare tire in the trunk...

Think of the possibilities...
Never heard of it again...

That doesn't mean it's not percolating away on the back burner in the bowels of someone's lab somewhere.

"There is a slow march toward improving today's systems, by 5 or 10 percent a year. Meanwhile, many innovative companies, scientists, and engineers are exploring novel approaches. Many of them may not work. But there is a reasonable chance that a couple may work-and really work, to double or triple energy density and lower cost. If you are a battery company and your cost per unit of storage doesn't drop by a factor of two in the next five years, you are going to be out of business."

Steven Chu, as told to James Fallows

Toward Better Batteries

 

[manatee]

Manatee,

I don't doubt that a few of them will wind up working out. And I absolutely think public funding of the basic science is necessary and proper. But most of these technologies will wind up washing out (much like 999 of Edison's bulbs). That doesn't mean the search shouldn't continue.

Yeah, the tricky bit is picking the right one out of the thousand. Still, it's better odds than the lottery.

I stuck a couple a weldin' rods and some steel wool in my fish tank, pretty sure I got cold fusion goin'.

...electrolysis and ferric oxidation, at least.