New Device to Charge Your Smartphone

Power cords and batteries are the bane of every device: You either bring around the necessary cords and cable televisions, or you hope the battery lasts. But now, researchers wish to change that, by constructing a charger powered by the movement of your body as you walk.

The device-- constructed by Georgia Tech analysts, led by Zhong Lin Wang-- consists of 4 discs layered on top of one another. The next is a polymer and continues to be stationary, and the 3rd is a gold layer that is divided into sectors, with rotating areas cut out, to make something that looks like a bicycle wheel.

When the copper disc turns, favorable charges in the copper step past the negative charges in the polymer. That causes an imbalance of charges in the gold layer, with each "spoke" of gold having either more favorable or more adverse charges. This imbalance implies that when a wire is connected in between sectors, a present flows. Visit the source for more information.