Saturday, September 29, 2007

ECOLOGY & NATURE


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USING FOOTSTEPS AS A FORM OF POWER

DAILY GREEN - Consider the potential energy in 6.6 billion pairs of
feet. That's what "Crowd Farming" aims to do, by using innovative
technologies beneath sidewalks and flights of stairs. It's a
cutting-edge area of research at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.

Every footfall gives off enough power, according to a story in the
Christian Science Monitor, to light two 60-watt bulbs for one second.
But multiply each individual's footfalls by the number of people walking
through a busy train station, say, and you've suddenly transformed Grand
Central Terminal into Grand Central Power Plant. If each takes just 120
steps, they've created enough energy to send a rocket into space.

Scientists and engineers are working on countless projects to harvest
wasted or unused energy - whether its the excess heat from a turbine
used to melt snow on sidewalks, or the motion energy of the feet walking
across that same sidewalk.

http://www.thedailygreen.com/2007/09/26/harvesting-alternative-
energy-from-countless-walking-feet/7203/



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