Science is a wonderful realm, and with a little innovation, you can do wonderful things. Just try to imagine how you would be perceived by people of the Middle Ages if you miraculously travel back to those times and show them a smartphone. You would be lucky if they don’t accuse you of being the Devil’s servant and burn you on the stake.
Even if we live in the era of intelligent robots, computers, smartphones, satellites, and space exploration, we will still be amazed when new inventions emerge.
Water vapor can provide energy for batteries
A team of scientists from the Tel Aviv University has discovered that water vapor from the atmosphere has the potential to become a source of renewable energy. They didn’t manage to generate enough voltage in their experiments, but if they raise the stakes, the method could be used for charging batteries.
Colin Price, who is a co-author of the paper publishing the research and also scientist at the Porter School of the Environment and Earth Sciences from the Tel Aviv University, declared:
“If an AA battery is 1.5V, there may be a practical application in the future: to develop batteries that can be charged from water vapor in the air,”
He further explained:
“Electricity in thunderstorms is generated only by water in its different phases — water vapor, water droplets, and ice,”
“Twenty minutes of cloud development is how we get from water droplets to huge electric discharges — lightning — some half a mile in length,”
There’s no secret to science that water droplets from the air have the potential to charge metal surfaces. In their research, the scientists honed in on that process and discovered that voltage only developed when relative humidity from the air surpassed 60 percent.
The study was published in the journal Nature.
