Power to the People
By Anne Pawsey
Crowds. Probably most peoples’ idea of hell, especially during the morning commute to work, but would the knowledge that you’re helping to save the planet encourage you to fight your way through them?Two architecture students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have taken the term ‘people power’ quite literally and devised a way for crowds to generate electricity. A ‘crowd farm’ would work by harnessing the energy of human footsteps to generate power, using under-floor blocks in the station’s lobby. These would be squashed by the force of people walking over them and would rub against each other, generating electricity by the principle of a dynamo (moving a conductor through a magnetic field generates electricity).
The device only works with crowds; a lone human walking wouldn’t produce enough power to light a bulb for more than a couple of seconds. The architects envisage that the power could be used to light a sign or other device to inform the crowd about energy. Another option is to use the power of crowds to increase the volume of music at rock festivals, allowing loud songs to be blasted out even louder. More development is needed before crowd farms hit floors worldwide. They may be built using standard kit, but they won’t come cheap.
Visit Anne's page for more unlikely news or click on the links below for more of the same:
- Strange - Corridor currents
- Madness - Swarms of rubber ducks
- Spoof - Solar panels to power USA
- Silly - Wayne Rooney's energy generating capacity
Image: Konrad Baranski
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