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December 12, 2013

Harvesting electricity: Triboelectric generators capture wasted power

With one stomp of his foot, Zhong Lin Wang illuminates a thousand LED bulbs--with no batteries or power cord. A professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Wang is using what's technically known as the triboelectric effect to create surprising amounts of electric power by rubbing or touching two different materials together.

Credit: Georgia Institute of Technology


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