This little cell phone article has far reaching implications

[ThomWV]

Energy from the air - and no, this is not another perpetual motion machine idea. Here's the link and a couple of paragraphs to give you an idea what's going on.

Link: http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/143945

"Prototype Nokia phone recharges without wires

Pardon the cliche, but it's one of the holiest of Holy Grails of technology: Wireless power. And while early lab experiments have been able to "beam" electricity a few feet to power a light bulb, the day when our laptops and cell phones can charge without having to plug them in to a wall socket still seems decades in the future.

Nokia, however, has taken another baby step in that direction with the invention of a cell phone that recharges itself using a unique system: It harvests ambient radio waves from the air, and turns that energy into usable power. Enough, at least, to keep a cell phone from running out of juice.

While "traditional" (if there is such a thing) wireless power systems are specifically designed with a transmitter and receiver in mind, Nokia's system isn't finicky about where it gets its wireless waves. TV, radio, other mobile phone systems -- all of this stuff just bounces around the air and most of it is wasted, absorbed into the environment or scattered into the ether*. Nokia picks up all the bits and pieces of these waves and uses the collected electromagnetic energy to create electrical current, then uses that to recharge the phone's battery. A huge range of frequencies can be utilized by the system (there's no other way, really, as the energy in any given wave is infinitesimal). It's the same idea that Tesla was exploring 100 years ago, just on a tiny scale."


* What sort of Editor would have allowed this archaic word to remain in the article knowing full well that that it refers to a concept as outdated as home alchemy and not one reader in 100 would know what it means (or meant)? Its almost like reverse newspeak but with the same effect, to lull us into deeper ignorance.

[MercutioATC]

1. So 5 seconds in the microwave should fully charge it, right?

[ThomWV]

5. Depends on how wide the spectrum of usable wavelengths is

But my guess is that 5 seconds in even a low power microwave oven would provide enough energy to power a cell phone for a very long time.

[girl gone mad]

2. At this point, "into the ether" is more a colloquial expression..

than an archaic one. Yes, the scientific theory of an ethereal medium fell out of favor a century ago, but I would guess that most of the people who are interested enough in this article to read up to that paragraph understand precisely what the author is saying.

[customerserviceguy]

14. You stated it well

This was Yahoo Tech, not People magazine. We've had "Ethernet" for quite some time now, most people who are techies have heard of it.

[anigbrowl]

18. Quite so. It's not being presented in a scientific context.

[ThomWV]

20. So its OK to make the common man stupider but not scientists?

It is a reference to a concept of the Universe that originated in roughly 500BCE with as little validity today as then. To use it as if it were the way energy acts in the universe is just promoting ignorance.

[anigbrowl]

21. It isn't being used that way.

I take 'the ether' as used in this or any other modern story to mean humanity's general electromagnetic background radiation, not as a reference to the ether whose existence was disproved by the Michelson-Morley experiments.

[SpiralHawk]

3. Ether

From the ancients to the moderns, the element of the Fifth World, the Aquarian World. Folks just gonna have to get used to reality.

From Wikipedia
Plato's Timaeus posits the existence of a fifth element (corresponding to the fifth remaining Platonic solid, the dodecahedron) called quintessence, of which the cosmos and all celestial bodies are made.

Aristotle included aether in the system of the classical elements of Ionic philosophy as the "fifth element" (the quintessence), on the principle that the four terrestrial elements were subject to change and moved naturally in straight lines while no change had been observed in the celestial regions and the heavenly bodies moved in circles. In Aristotle's system aether had no qualities (was neither hot, cold, wet, or dry), was incapable of change (with the exception of change of place), and by its nature moved in circles.<3>

[RC]

4. ether? I'm so old I knew what he meant.

Yesterday I read an news article that mentioned condensers for electrical storage for the home. That's what you get when people with no knowledge of the subject write about something.

[mwb970]

7. "Condensers" is the British word for capacitors, and is still in use there.

It has come into American usage as a car part and as a type of microphone. Could your source have been British?

[RC]

24. Not sure, but it could very well have been.

I forgot about that. The British invented our language didn't they?

[mwb970]

6. The article is interesting, but your critique of the "ether" reference is offbase.

There is no implication that the author subscribes to 19th-century theories. The word has passed into the language as a term in its own right. One definition given on dictionary.com reads like this:

Physics. a hypothetical substance supposed to occupy all space, postulated to account for the propagation of electromagnetic radiation through space.

To me, the usage is an example of the kind of imaginative, colorful writing I like to read. The idea that writers should only use words that "average people" can all understand will produce dull, colorless writing that will indeed "lull us into deeper ignorance". I have a wide vocabulary, and I appreciate it when writers respect that rather than "dumbing down" their remarks so that 100 out of 100 "average people" will understand it!

[ThomWV]

9. What is the value of having a complete understanding of something that doesn't exist?

You and I may know what the word means but the fact is that there is no such thing and yet it is refered to as the substance that sucks up energy. If you are willing to accept that statement then your understanding of that which is real has been diminished and that - despite any desire for colorful language - is not a good thing.

Now if you had made the argument that the ether that they were refering to is really the mysterious stuff we now call "dark matter" then a discussion could go forward and we could see if that link could be made. However what it seems to me is happening is you're trying to preserve a disproven concept just for the sake of having a word to use without regard for its effect on our understanding. Simply put if you believe in an ether then you have been misled and if you continue to use it as the editor allowed it to be used above then you continue to mislead and I'm pretty sure that's not your intention. It is not just that the word is archaic, its that its a disproven concept.

[mwb970]

13. I hear you, but I still disagree, sorry.

Did you look at the dictionary definition I linked to? One of the definitions is: "the upper regions of space; the clear sky; the heavens." This is a legitimate meaning of this word (it's right there in the dictionary), and this is the sense in which it was used in the original piece. You write as if the word has only a single meaning, namely "the medium supposed by the ancients to fill the upper regions of space", yet this is only one of five definitions given (two involve chemistry, three involve space).

The other problem I have with your objection is that this usage is quite common, at least in the materials I read. (Your mileage may vary.)

As a final point, here is a quote from Albert Einstein, cited in Wikipedia:

Einstein said that according to general relativity space is endowed with physical properties (the metric field), and one could use the word "ether", if one wished, to refer to this metric field, although he acknowledged that this meaning of the word "differs widely from that of the ether of the mechanical undulatory theory of light".

So the word was OK with Einstein. But what does he know?

[ima_sinnic]

22. also defined in Merriam Webster's 11th Collegiate (my bible, as an editor) as

"a medium that in the wave theory of light permeates all space and transmits transverse waves," also, syn. "airwaves"

[Pavulon]

8. My toothbrush does that...

Wireless power is cool but there are issues with energizing spaces we live and work in. Will be cool to see how they work this out.

[ThomWV]

11. You mean living under a high power transmisson line isn't such a good thing?

[zipplewrath]

12. Not exactly what they are saying

They are basically suggesting the energy is already there, and just being wasted. They are harvesting it and trying to us it to maintain a cell phone charge in the battery. A few numbers would have been nice. How much does a phone need to maintain a charge when it is not used? What is the energy density they are trying to access? What is their efficiency/ And in a dense urban environment, could the phones be "absorbing" signals that might otherwise be useful?

[shadowknows69]

10. Interesting. Maybe Nokia should change its name to Nikola?

[Tesha]

26. Nahhh, that name's not Finnished. (NT)

[surrealAmerican]

15. Very clever.

Your phone could be continuously recharging from the radio waves that are already all around it.

[NoSheep]

16. With the term "ethernet cable" in wide usage, I'd bet most people who

may not have known what "ether" was 5 yrs ago, have some concept now. Just saying.

[Xithras]

25. I've heard the word Ether used a lot, and I'm not old.

In modern American English, it's pretty much interchangeable with "void", though it's typically used when you know the void is not truly empty.

It might be a regionalism.

[Javaman]

17. I remember years ago there was a watch that was self winding...

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gadgets/clocks-watches/question285.htm

why, in this day in age, can't something like this be adapted for cell phones?

I'm not quite an old geezer, nor do I yell at kids go get off my lawn, but sometimes doesn't old technology deserve another look?

[ThomWV]

19. They had a weight in the back of the case that moved with your movement

Somehow it was the movement of that weight that was used to capture the energy and of course it was actually your muscle energy that powered the watch. I had one of of them back when I was young - I don't recall any problem with it so it must have worked OK.

[spin]

23. They still exist today...Rolex watches are one example

but many other manufacturers produce self winding or automatic watches.

6. How does an automatic watch work?

The movement of the wrist and body causes the rotor, a metal weight attached to a winding mechanism, to pivot freely on its staff in the center of the movement. The rotor rotates back and forth in a circular motion at the slightest action of the wrist. The rotor's movement winds the mainspring, a flat coiled spring that powers mechanical watches.

****snip****

8. Why do we see more automatics these days?

Like all mechanical watches, automatics fell out of style during the quartz watch revolution of the 1970s. Electronic watches were the rage then and were far more accurate than mechanicals. In the mid-1980s, however, as quartz watch production soared to hundreds of millions of pieces each year, some people, mostly watch collectors, began to appreciate the value of a fine mechanical watch. In the past 10 years, fine mechanical watches have staged a comeback on world markets. Automatics have rebounded as part of the mechanical counter-revolution.
http://www.europastar.com/europastar/watch_tech/automa.jsp#anchor104046

It is recommended that you wear a self winding watch for 8 hours a day. But devices exist that will wind the watch off your wrist. For example:

Product Description
Double automatic watch winder with built in MULTI SETTING SMART IC TIMER, rotates clockwise, counter-clockwise or alternate it will work with all kind of automatic watches This watch winder will keep your automatic timepieces wound and ready to wear when you need them. Comparable watch winders sell for well over $350 in fine retail jewelry stores, now you can have one of the finest automatic watch winders at a fraction of that cost. World's finest watches manufacturers use automatic movement fo their watches like Rolex , Patek Philippe, Breitling, Movado IWC Tag Heuer as well as many other known brand name watch manufacturers, today's most extravagant timepieces come equipped with the world's most advanced automatic, perpetual movement.
http://www.amazon.com/Double-automatic-watch-winder-SETTING/dp/B001XTVLY6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=watches&qid=1245265901&sr=8-1

[Tesha]

27. It's mostly a questioned of size versus power.

Your average "automatic watch" runs on nearly no power at all.
But a cell phone, even idling, uses a fair amount of power so
the eccentric weight, gears, and DC generator would occupy a
pretty fair portion of the volume of the already-tightly-packed
phone.

Tesha