> If installed in floors, it could produce clean energy when people walk on it.
This is a bit far fetched as it does not mention any power density figure. Being compressed likely squeezes out micro watts. Off by at least 6 orders of magnitude.
What's interesting is that these materials can be used as sensors, building small voltages/sending small currents when deformed.
AFAIK They even had schools designed to limit the students bypassing these generators. Something about having the role of a child being to generate a miniscule amount of electricity seemed very dystopian to me.
I always wondered how "living slimes" made their way into various low level video game sewer systems.
Now I can see it...this stuff dumped down the drain, mixed with refuse and the occasional decomposing organic material...who knows what it could produce
While this seems cool and fascinating, I think it'd be good to call it something other than 'slime'! That word is already taken, several times over.. why not get creative? "Electro-squeeze-goo"? "Piezoelectric-paste"?
There's a pervasive idea amongst science communicators that you have to use common childlike words to make science accessible -- there's a fear that technical words are elitist and exclusionary. The end result is that every science documentary is now presented like a kids TV show, even when it's targeted at adults.
EDIT: Forgot to add, the researchers referred to it as a "Ferroelectric soft material".
That is exactly the problem. When my family watch science documentaries I die inside a bit. They seem to have left with some insight but they managed to slap about 20 words together and some fancy scenes and extrapolations and turn it into an hour of garbage.
My kids just want to know if they can play with it and spill in on the carpet or car seat or couch so they can create hours of work for me cleaning up their slime.
On a serious note these material discoveries are neat to see but seldom do we see any real world applications come out of them. I am absolutely ready for the next game changing tech to come out. The next battery. Or finally fusion power. A space elevator. Anything. My guess is the next big change will be personal robots becoming main stream. First in business then in our homes. We were promised clothes folding laundry machines a couple years back that never happened. I need my laundry bot asap.
It's probably going to take a bit longer, but there's a lot of ongoing progress in this area. A recent approach is actually called ASAP - https://agile.human2humanoid.com/
Maybe we need a washing machine that acts more like a car wash. Basically you take a shower with your clothes on and then stand under a giant fan to dry off.
The one paper I co-authored whilst mostly drunk on a Mediterranean island would have been described as "new statistical model could save billions of lives!" if we hadn't called the university out on it. It would have been a grand extrapolation of a nothing.
I like that the lead scientist is testing the material for basic saftey by useing it as a hand salve for apres rock climbing, as that fits in exactly with one of the more interesting use cases.
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This is a bit far fetched as it does not mention any power density figure. Being compressed likely squeezes out micro watts. Off by at least 6 orders of magnitude.
What's interesting is that these materials can be used as sensors, building small voltages/sending small currents when deformed.
https://energy-floors.com/coldplay/
Reality: It will be used for sex.
Now I can see it...this stuff dumped down the drain, mixed with refuse and the occasional decomposing organic material...who knows what it could produce
EDIT: Forgot to add, the researchers referred to it as a "Ferroelectric soft material".
Like really, people can't understand 155 miles/250km, or 8.8 miles/14.2km?
Cue Brian Cox thoughtfully staring into oblivion.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S016773222...
I don't understand cyclic voltammetry, but it seems from Fig 4a this tops out at about 75 µW/cm²?
On a serious note these material discoveries are neat to see but seldom do we see any real world applications come out of them. I am absolutely ready for the next game changing tech to come out. The next battery. Or finally fusion power. A space elevator. Anything. My guess is the next big change will be personal robots becoming main stream. First in business then in our homes. We were promised clothes folding laundry machines a couple years back that never happened. I need my laundry bot asap.
The one paper I co-authored whilst mostly drunk on a Mediterranean island would have been described as "new statistical model could save billions of lives!" if we hadn't called the university out on it. It would have been a grand extrapolation of a nothing.