Some scientists at Georgia Tech (and Xiamen University, China) have accidentally stumbled on an amazingly efficient and simple way to generate electricity. Its literally as simple as rubbing two pieces of plastic against each other.
Despite improvements by Wang’s team and others, such piezoelectric devices have generated mere micro-watts of power. Until, that is, they wrapped one in plastic.Sounds like something out of Thomas Edison's lab, doesn't it? "Science is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration." This is a great example of why you cannot predict innovation, you can only fund people with good track records and stay out of their way. A few more details below the fold.While investigating one piezo generator, Feng-Ru Fan, one of Wang’s graduate students, put a layer of plastic known as PMMA on top of it for protection. The generator in turn was sitting on a different plastic called Kapton. When Fan measured the device’s performance, he consistently found it was generating a higher voltage than expected. Fan and Wang spent months investigating what was happening, before concluding that the added power was coming from static electricity. When the PMMA and Kapton come into contact and rub against one another, friction generates electrical charges.
