Editor’s note: This article was first published in July 2013, as news written before the Google Science Fair final in September 2013, when she could win 50,000 dollars and a trip. The outcome is not stated, and her age of 15 is as of 2013.
Ann Makosinski, a 15-year-old student, has invented a thermoelectric flashlight that gives light using nothing but the heat of your hands. She worked out that the heat from a person’s palm generates about 57 milliwatts of electrical energy, which is far more than enough to light the flashlight’s LED.
Makosinski entered the project in the 2013 Google Science Fair, where in September she could win 50,000 dollars and a trip. Her project has already made the leap to become a real product: it needs no batteries at all and, as this student entrepreneur describes it, it is thermodynamically efficient.
As for how the flashlight works, I imagine the full scientific explanation is more complex. In short, she tells us that all it needs is a temperature difference of 5 degrees between the heat of the hand and the surrounding air. When you place your hand on the flashlight, one side warms up while the air flowing through its aluminum tube cools the other. And that produces light (more or less).
In this video she explains and demonstrates it (in English): Watch the video.
As we can see, 2013 is shaping up to be full of inspiration from young people. We previously wrote about another 18-year-old entrepreneur who invented a device that could charge a phone in 20 seconds. Clearly there is still a lot to be done in new forms of energy and energy saving, and alternative energy sources and devices that can provide power without polluting will certainly bring big business opportunities in the future.
Further reading
- A 14-year-old entrepreneur makes her first million
- Great leaders give advice to students and entrepreneurs
Featured image: Secretaría de Cultura de la Nación, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
