We know that scientists are busy working on alternate sources of energy. However, a 15 year old boy has come up with a new idea that is quite impressive. Meet Angel Casimiro from the Philippines. This genius has come up with a design for shoes, which allows him to charge his cellphone and other gadgets. How has he managed this? The kid decided to place his bet on the piezoelectricity as means to come up with an environmentally friendly way of generating power.
According to him; ‘It wasn’t easy to think of an energy alternative that’s not related to wind, solar, hydro or biogas. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of footsteps land each second and each footstep greats a great amount of force. Maybe it’s possible to harvest this force.’
The kid went on to craft insoles for his shoes with piezoelectric crystals attached to them. Now every time he takes a step, the crystals affixed onto his insoles flex and this results in electricity generation. Angel doubled the number of crystals in order to generate more power. His idea has been submitted to Google’s Science Fair as well.
The only problem with his gadget right now is the fact that his design doesn’t generate enough energy; you will have to jog for about eight hours, if you want to charge a 400mAh Li-ion battery completely. Now this is something really hard for a teenager and almost impossible for an elderly person.
We hope that this idea catches on and Angel’s design can be improved and more efficient.