Ken Nelson

The above equation looks pretty simple, and it is, but in it lies the keys to our modern world.  Put simply, the above explains how to make electricity.

There are lots of types of energy: potential, thermal, kinetic, electric, electromagnetic, to name some well known types.  And any type of energy can be transformed into another form.  So, you can take kinetic energy and turn it into electromagnetic, as an example.

Popular examples of energy transformation are “burn gas, push cylinder, get horse power” and “gravity moves water, water turns turbine, get electricity”.

The easy ones have been well sorted out by now, but opportunities to transform unused energy to useful energy abound.

My daughter, age 9 at the time, came to me with a complicated set of drawings on paper, that basically were a windmill hosted inside a car. I complimented her on the idea, but used it as a teachable moment on conservation of energy – explaining that the pushing on the windmill would cost the car an equal amount (at best) of what it generated. We decided that tying the windmill to the brakes, and  exposing it to air when the brakes were applied, would be the only way to beat the equation. But neither of us had the math chops (any longer) to figure out just how much it would help.

I urged her to think about what in the car has to move, but that could be captured and converted to energy.  She thought about it a bit and said “bumps” and “brakes”.

I explained that brake heat has been used in cars to generate electricity.

But to my knowledge, bumps “or shocks absorbers” had not and so we doodled around with that idea a bit and then called it a day.

But some MIT students took it all the way. And they have created “genShock” – shock absorbers that not only act as shocks but run a hydraulic generator to make power so the vehicles alternator doesn’t.  That saves fuel. And it can increase vehicle range by up to 10% in some electric vehicles, 2-4% in regular cars, and 8% in military vehicles.

Good idea! 

I wonder what other necessary kinetic energy is out there waiting to be transformed for our use?  To my knowledge brake synchronized windmills have not been done yet, I’m sure there are plenty of other ideas out there waiting to be thought of.