The proper basis for a marriage is mutual misunderstanding - Oscar Wilde
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Sun powered circuit invented
BOFFINS AT the University of Pennsylvania have created a circuit that can power itself, as long as it's left in a beam of sunlight.
Dawn Bonnell, a scientist from the University of Pennsylvania who co-authored a recent ACS Nano paper, believes she has created the world's first photovoltaic circuit that eventually might power a new line of consumer devices.
Bonnell told Discovery it has the potential to create a new generation of optical and electronic devices where the touchscreen of your computer could act as both the electrical charger and the computer chip.
This is assuming that touchscreens are the interface of the future of course, but given that the writer of the article, Eric Bland sacrificed his credibility on this story by using the first paragraph to hail the coming of Apple's Ipad we can assume he is also a little wonky on the story.
Bonnell has only managed to get small amounts of electricity from photovoltaic circuits and nowhere near enough to power a computer yet.
However she thinks that this could be improved. Right now only about 10 percent of the photovoltaic circuits on a glass screen work.
She thinks it might be possible to squeeze more power out of it by stacking multiple layers of light-collecting and electricity-using circuits. µ
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It is the first paragraph of a story that had nothing to do with the iPad. I would have thought Nick would have been spitting acid for something like that.
Just read the link.
"The IPad" is a mentioned with a highlighted link to promote it, and further down is this hilarious jewel:
At their most basic, computers represent data as on or off, a "0" or a "1."
Ok, so she stuck a little solar cell on an IC - not hard since any junction exposed to sunlight generates a little power. I've done it with 1N914s in their little glass bodies.
What is more troubling is her statement concerning scaling:
"We would have one amp with one volt in a sample the diameter of a human hair and an inch long,"
In which universe? Sunlight strikes the earth with about 1000W per square metre or roughly 1W per 3x3 cm patch of ground. Her proposed 1W device covers significantly less area than 3x3 cm.
Of course, hers occupies volume and not just area.
Nutters, the lot of them. Next they'll be telling us that the we're related to monkeys and the world is warming.
Well, *this* time, the sarcastic remark about the ipad was a bit hollow and vitriolic ... I clicked the referred link expecting to see a glowing diatribe from the referenced author about ipad, but all there was was a reference, and a rather dismissive one at that.
The ipad is an item of significant current news, it's not unexpected or unfair to expect references to it to colour stories that are related to it in some way - in this case, because the self-powered circuit may be beneficially usable in portable computing devices such as the ipad.
Referring to the ipad in particular can colour the relevance of the article for less tech-savvy users and then the rest of the article (which doesn't mention ipad again) may educate them about the broader tech industry.
In this case, that author hasn't really done enough in his brief ipad mention to warrant an accusation of losing all credibility - especially not if that's the only judged criterion. So I take it the comment was just exaggerative sarcasm ... if so, then in this case, it's just not as witty/funny as on other occasions - that's my humour analysis done. Bye now.
I won't call it a microprocessor then.
You could put your company computer servers in roof tiles... but what about snow? (In fact, what about night?)
Build the solar panel into the screen cos we all know how easy it is to read a display in bright sunlight...
DUR!