Flashlights are indispensable in areas that go without electricity for hours and there are still many such places in the world and in our country that don't have the luxury of uninterrupted power. This teen from Canada has developed something that could be very useful in such areas. She has created a flashlight that is powered by the heat from the human hand!
Ann Makosinski is 15 years old and attends St. Michaels University School in Canada but unlike those her age she’ll be competing at the Google Science Fair 2013.
Makosinski with her flashlight
Makosinski used four Peltier tiles and with the help of the difference in the temperature between the palm of the hand and the air she managed to design her flashlight. Describing her project she says, “My design is ergonomic, thermodynamically efficient, and only needs a five degree temperature difference to work and produce up to 5.4 mW at 5 foot candles of brightness.”
She explains that if one side of these Peltier tiles is heated and the other is cooled, electricity is generated. Adapting this knowledge to her own creation, the teen says that for her flashlight she would heat one side with the palm (human heat) and cool the other side of the tile with a heatsink.
Makosinski’s final design of the flashlight had her mount the Peltier tiles on a hollow aluminium tube inserted in a PVC pipe. The pipe’s opening allows air to fill the tube. With one’s palm wrapped around a cutout in the PVC pipe the tiles are warmed….and there was light!
Ann Makosinski is 15 years old and attends St. Michaels University School in Canada but unlike those her age she’ll be competing at the Google Science Fair 2013.
Makosinski with her flashlight
Makosinski used four Peltier tiles and with the help of the difference in the temperature between the palm of the hand and the air she managed to design her flashlight. Describing her project she says, “My design is ergonomic, thermodynamically efficient, and only needs a five degree temperature difference to work and produce up to 5.4 mW at 5 foot candles of brightness.”
She explains that if one side of these Peltier tiles is heated and the other is cooled, electricity is generated. Adapting this knowledge to her own creation, the teen says that for her flashlight she would heat one side with the palm (human heat) and cool the other side of the tile with a heatsink.
Makosinski’s final design of the flashlight had her mount the Peltier tiles on a hollow aluminium tube inserted in a PVC pipe. The pipe’s opening allows air to fill the tube. With one’s palm wrapped around a cutout in the PVC pipe the tiles are warmed….and there was light!
