Comments on: Chocolate Toothpaste, Paper-thin Batteries and the Resurgence of the Dodo (the bird, not your neighbor)?

By: Pointy-Hatted Geek

Pointy-Hatted Geek — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 21:12:38 +0000

Plock!

By: n2y2

n2y2 — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 19:56:24 +0000

Thanks for pointing out the futility of Biofuels. Most people don’t understand the concept.

However hope is on the horizon. The next generation of biofuels are set to be made from cellulose. That means it could be made from fast growing grasses. It would require little in the form of tilling, fertilizing and could be extremely productive on small parcels of land. So there is hope for biofuel.

It can be produced using current technology, but the cost is prohibitive. The breakthrough will be in making the production affordable.

A similar source of energy may be thermal depolymerization, a way to make oil out of trash. However, it has been under development so long that I am beginning to lose hope for it’s viability.

By: Jerse

Jerse — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 13:52:44 +0000

About those paper-thin batteries:

Currently, there’s a prototype for an organic battery made from algae. It’s paper thin and eco-friendly.

Look up organic battery on Google…

By: Kristina

Kristina — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 13:05:36 +0000

See Jasper Fforde’s Thursday Next series on what life is like with cloned Dodo birds!

By: Frank

Frank — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 11:23:19 +0000

“Batteries almost always make devices twice as heavy as they need to be.”
Since batteries weigh what they weigh, are you implying that the batteries in modern devices are almost always unneccessary? That’s a bold claim!

By: mauskov

mauskov — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 06:28:14 +0000

Yeah, RPI! Represent!

The whole story about these batteries has been lingering on the RPI frontpage for the past few days. It’s cool to see my alma mater get some attention.