#electricity

[nemfrog]

Bolts of lightning. Electricity for everybody. 1907.

Internet Archive

[noosphe-re]

A triggered lightning strike at the Camp Blanding facility, International Center for Lightning Research and Testing—ICLRT

[helledeh]

Pylon quilt!

made my me

inquiries DM through instagram - @helledeh

i sell patches @industrialwares on depop

tshirts coming soon too

[d3v0t10n]

i love the buzzing sound of electricity running through the wires

[enslavedbyfaeries]

In honor of our summer heatwave and the electric grids pleading for mercy 🔥 🥵

Paper: Arches 100% cotton/ cold press

Brushes: Isabey mop/ Silver Black Velvet rounds/ Rosemary & Co detail brushes

Paint: Daniel Smith/ HWC Holbein/ Poems About You

[anasabdin]

spantik

[reasonsforhope]

Electricity Captured from Falling Rain Conjures the Ultimate Picture of Tropical Sustainability

The total generation rate of greater than 10% resulted in about 100 watts per square meter of tube, enough to power a blender or router.

"Scientists in Singapore have broken a long-standing limitation on the ability to generate electricity from flowing water, suggesting that another elemental force of nature could be leveraged for renewable electricity: rain.

With the simplest and smallest scale test setup, the team could power around 12 LED lightbulbs with simulated rain droplets flowing through a tube, but at scale, their method could generate meaningful amounts that could rival rooftop solar arrays.

Singapore experiences significant rainfall throughout the year, averaging 101 inches (2581 millimeters) of precipitation annually. The idea of generating electricity from such falling water is attractive, but the method has long been constrained by a principle called the Debye Length.

Nevertheless, the concept is possible because of a simple physical principle that charged entities on the surface of materials get nudged when they rub together—as true for water droplets as it is for a balloon rubbed against the hair on one’s head.

While this is true, the power values thus generated have been negligible, and electricity from flowing water has been limited to the driving of turbines in hydropower plants.

However, in a study published in the journal ACS Central Science, a team of physicists has found a way to break through the constraints of water’s Debye Length, and generate power from simulated rain.

“Water that falls through a vertical tube generates a substantial amount of electricity by using a specific pattern of water flow: plug flow,” says Siowling Soh, author of the study. “This plug flow pattern could allow rain energy to be harvested for generating clean and renewable electricity.”

The authors write in their study that in existing tests of the power production from water flows, pumps are always used to drive liquid through the small channels. But the pumps require so much energy to run that outputs are limited to miniscule amounts.

Instead, their setup to harness this plug flow pattern was scandalously simple. No moving parts or mechanisms of any kind were required. A simple plastic tube just 2 millimeters in diameter; a large plastic bottle; a small metallic needle. Water coming out of the bottle ran along the needle and bumped into the top section of the tube that had been cut in half, interrupting the water flow and allowing pockets of air to slide down the tube along with the water.

The air was the key to breaking through the limits set by the Debye Length, and key to the feasibility of electricity generation from water. Wires placed at the top of the tube and in the cup harvested the electricity.

The total generation rate of greater than 10% resulted in about 100 watts per square meter of tube. For context, a 100-watt solar panel can power an appliance as large as a blender or ceiling fan, charge a laptop, provide for several light bulbs, or even a Wi-Fi router.

Because the droplet speeds tested were much slower than rain, the researchers suggest that the real thing would provide even more than their tests, which were of course on a microscale."

-via Good News Network, April 30, 2025