30-second cellphone recharge technology developed by high school student

There was a time when high school science projects involved baking soda volcanoes dropping egg-filled containers from helicopters. That may actually still be the case, but not for a batch of 1,600 high school students at this year’s 2013 Intel International Science.

18-year-old Eesha Khare developed a super-capacitor with a special nano-structure that allows more energy within a lower volume. It is able to deliver the energy more efficiently and stores it for up to 10,000 cycles (compared to most batteries that last around 1000 cycles). It can charge cellphone batteries in 30 seconds and the technology could be applied to other storage units such as car batteries.

Her prize: $50,000 that she’ll be applying to her education this fall at Harvard. Leave it to a teen girl to figure out how to charge cell phones more efficiently.

Here she is describing her project:

A 450-foot tall game of pong played on the Cira Centre Building in Philadelphia

It’s the grandfather of all video games. Pong has been played on many grand stages, but according to Dr. Frank Lee, gaming professor at Drexel University, the game played on April 19th and the followup games on April 24th are the biggest games of Pong in history.

Dozens of people got to play, being selected as part of a “Golden Ticket” lottery on April 17th. The games are being held on the Cira Centre Building in downtown Philadelphia as part of Philadelpha Tech Week.

“The project came to me as I driving down 76,” said Lee. “As the sun was going down I saw the sparkly lights at the Cira Centre. In my mind I saw Tetris shapes falling down. That was the genesis of trying to create a game using the Cira Centre lights., so this will be a 450-foot tall video game.”

Lee has been working on the project for four years.

“Pong is not just a game that people in the gaming community knows but Pong is something that everyone knows,” he continued. “It is a cultural milestone.”

Here’s the video describing the project, footage from the April 19th event, and the flyer used to promote the lottery.

How LED lights are made

LED lights are small, but integral components in our technology. From tiny blips of light that serve as electronics indicators, to large-scale LED clusters that form business signs, these diodes have played an impactful role in the history of electronics and computing. LEDs were a brainchild of the 1960s, an era marked by innovation and competition in the semiconductor field, as researchers strived to propel their companies to the forefront of technology.

As several big players, including Texas Instruments, Bell Laboratories, RCA, and GE jumped into the race, LEDs have developed as increasingly powerful light sources that are energy efficient and safer for the environment.

Initial steps and challenges

Illinois-born GE scientist, Nick Holonyk championed the first visible LED lights in 1962. Prior to his development, other semiconductor researchers focused on infrared, which were not visible to the naked human eye. Holonyk’s first LED glowed a deep red. For years, this was the only color available, and its use was limited. Red LEDs do not have enough output to illuminate large areas, and were confined to remotes and electronics as indicators.

Early LEDs were not very widespread. They required more energy than modern day ones, burned out quickly, and they were difficult to maintain by a consumer market. Another challenge was that they only worked with liquid nitrogen temperatures.

Components

LEDs have a fairly simple construction, consisting of very few parts. A semiconductor wafer is the key element, composed of various chemicals to move electrons from a high-density area to a low density one. Just like turning on a faucet, electricity moves in one direction. Chemical impurities are created within semiconductor wafers to excite electronics, causing the glow that is visible to the human eye. The process of creating impurities is known as doping. This allows LEDs to operate on very little energy, making them far more efficient than incandescent bulbs. Electricity makes a jump from a positively charged material to negatively charged material. That jump releases energy that produces visible light. These pieces are surrounded by a clear plastic, protecting the components and containing them.

Two metal shafts called “leads” (known as the cathode and anode) are connected to the wafers, creating a channel for electricity to flow. Anodes are the longer metal leads, and they are connected to the positive charge of a battery. Cathodes are attached to negative voltage, or the ground. Accidentally swapping the positive and negative attachments can burn out an LED, so take care to wire things correctly when experimenting with LEDs.

Development for lighting

Finding a range of colors for LEDs proved to be a historical challenge. Using LEDs as a primary light source seemed to be unreasonable, as early colors were not ideal for long-range illumination. However, researcher Naruhito Iwasa of the Nichia Corporation was able to change the game, propelling LEDs into office use and inside of traffic lights. Iwasa focused on color and brightness, producing white, blue, and green LEDs that were infinitely brighter than their predecessors.

The future of LED construction

Automatic manufacturing has dropped the cost of LEDs dramatically throughout the decades. Depending on the color and brightness, LED lights are extraordinarily affordable and easy to replace. As televisions and computer displays rely increasingly on LED illumination, their construction becomes ever more thinner, robust, and efficient.

With every year, the cost to produce semiconductors drops, allowing LEDs to be more accessible as a cheap light source. A forecast known as Haitz’s Law predicts that LEDs will become increasingly more powerful each decade. As people seek for eco-friendly alternatives, more attention is garnered by LEDs due to their small electrical demands and big punch.

Volvo active high beam control keeps your brights on without blinding others

Turn them on. Turn them off. Turn them on. Turn them off. On busier roads, it gets to the point that toggling between low beam and high beam gets so repetitious that most people just turn them off and go semi-blindly into the night.

Volvo feels your pain. They know that there are times when drivers want to avoid blinding other drivers but still keep a view of sides of the road. With their new Active High Beam Control, drivers can keep their brights on at all times and let the car decide where to block out the beams. As you can see in the visual above, they high beams persist in the view around the car but keeps the driver in the car in front of you from being blinded.

According to AutoInTheNews:

Volvo is developing Active High Beam Control, a combination of a sensor as well as light blocking mechanisms that know where cars are both in front as well as to the side. When a car is seen by the sensor, it blocks the high beams in that particular area without turning the high beams off altogether.

Here’s what Volvo has to show about this.

The most detailed lightsaber building instructional infographic you’ll see all day

Let’s go ahead and start with a disclaimer – if you build a real lightsaber and harm someone or yourself with it, please do not blame us. We’re only showing you the “how”. What you choose to do with the most powerful weapon in the galaxy is up to you.

With that out of the way, take a look at these awesome and detailed instructions on how to build one. Be a jedi. Defend the galaxy. If it’s not for you, we’ll see if we can find a good blaster-building tutorial.

Click to enlarge.

Courtesy of: Herbert Pocket