tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1523231273885627613.post2957621137092274621..comments2024-03-08T13:48:22.798+11:00Comments on Talking Plants: Power PlantTalking Plantshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05778763864080365220noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1523231273885627613.post-40182721486286415032009-09-10T21:10:26.682+10:002009-09-10T21:10:26.682+10:00Subject: power plant?
I had a look...
Bit Hard t...Subject: power plant?<br /><br />I had a look...<br /><br />Bit Hard to know what they are doing... And from what is given in the news paper article, its not clear the power comes from the tree - but I assume it does, because they would have checked that...<br /><br />I mean you could get 10s of millivolts from hanging wires froms your clothes lines (just from stray fields and the like) - but I am guess this is not what they are picking up. It's kind of funny that they brush over the most interesting bit - which is why the tree has that potential there... and what purpose it serves -- and then I would be worried about what effect drawing the power from it would cause on its health, given that it is presumably meant to do something....<br /><br />But the rest of it sounded more like just engineering. Once you had lots of little pontential differences (voltages in electrician speak) (at very powers - so with not much possibility to drive anything - in battery terms they would go flat fast), there are alot of ways of "adding" them together to give you a significant voltage and power (or stepping them up), using conventional ideas. Like how we add all our batteries together in devices that require a higher voltage (if you remember the early 'ghetto blasters' - they took about 12 D batteries so they had 18V our of just 1.5V batteries.... Or how in the flash we use time to allow a capacitor to 'charge' up from a normal battery over a time, and give us a very short burst of very high power - high current output for an short lived bright burst of light.<br /><br />Those guys on this project happen to be 'nano' freaks - so they have lots of solid state 'nano' circuits, which means they create some really low powered micro circuits (which of course they call nano circuits) - just means they are very small, and have very small currents....<br /><br />Basically its i like having your video recorder in standby mode, and even though Al gore is troubled by how much power it uses - it really isnt very much - but in their case, it is another order of magnitude less, because the circuits are so tiny, they used nothing.... and the recorder is set to record something (say)... so it sits in stand by using nothing for most of the time using so little that even al gore might find it convinient; then it switches on for a second to record (in this case presumably a tempature or soil mositure or something).<br /><br />I am not really sure what you werent sure of... and besides i am really admin not physics....<br /><br />Colin EntwisleTalking Plantshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05778763864080365220noreply@blogger.com