Kelvin's hydroelectric generator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin_water_dropper

by jibiki • 17 years ago

17 7 17 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

Femur• 17 years ago

That is fascinating. Other than with solar panels, I was unaware of any other non-mechanical* method for generating electricity. I wonder what the efficiency of this would be compared to a conventional hydroelectric generator.

*Solar panels I suppose are technically mechanical because they rely on a photon striking a surface.

jws• 17 years ago

Maybe they are just waves when they interact. Never can tell with those duplicitous photons.

jibiki• 17 years ago

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=377672

There was also an article on HN about using osmotic pressure or something to generate electricity, basically an electron transport chain in reverse (I don't think I saved it...) I guess that's not as cool as Kelvin's thunderstorm, since it's basically just another chemical battery.

EDIT: Ah, never mind, it was just powering a turbine: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=435149

tesseract• 17 years ago

> I was unaware of any other non-mechanical* method for generating electricity.

What about electrochemistry (i.e. batteries and fuel cells)?

Trying to think of others, I guess I would include triboelectricity and the piezo effect among the mechanical methods. A thermocouple isn't mechanical though unless you are going to argue that it relies on kinetic energy of atoms. Alpha and beta decay are non-mechanical; also, there are some schemes for direct conversion of energy radiated from a (hypothetical) fusion reactor in the form of charged particles into electric current without a thermal/mechanical intermediate step.

Does the EMP from a nuclear weapon count as 'generated electricity'? (Would that be considered mechanical?)

(several edits: I thought of more.)

RiderOfGiraffes• 17 years ago

Having seen one built before my eyes during a physics lecture, I had to make one. There are some "gotchas," it's harder than it looks, but I've generated enough voltage to spark a one inch gap.

It is cool.

pkrumins• 17 years ago

here is a video of it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oY1eyLEo8_A

skwiddor• 17 years ago

the link at the bottom is also interesting http://amasci.com/emotor/kelvin.html

esp. this bit see WEIRDNESS: really really gigantic generators

Kelvin's hydroelectric generator

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