Science Ideas

Crystal Batteries - Power Alternative.

2011-12-26T19:30:04Z

Batteries, they are our primary means of power outside and inside the home. Our cordless, backup, and portable devices all use them.

What are the considerations to improve the already present technology?

Environmentally friendly components / materials.
Better storage capacity / output.
More dynamic in their packaging / space requirements.
Longer lasting both in output & lifespan.

I am aware of the power of crystals as they are already commonplace in our everyday industrial, consumer, and spiritual/alternative areas of life.

Liquid crystal displays (LCD’s) are in nearly every home in the form of computer monitors, ipods, televisions, and so on.

Their (crystals) ability to carry electrical current is a matter of fact and can be found in a number of textbooks. This is not new territory, but the application of using them as batteries is full of benefits that satisfy the 4 points above.

1. Crystals occur naturally and in abundance all over the world and are already mined routinely for use in many applications. Jewelry is the main one which people would be aware of in their day-to-day lives. They way also be aware of lab-grown crystals too. So are we talking mining more of the earths natural resources? Well lab grown crystals are not held in such high regard as the original naturally occurring ones in looks. But if we are only looking to replicate their chemical properties, then lab-grown crystals are an economical , eco-friendly, and very good alternative to mining natural ones.

2. Crystals are a much better conductor of electricity than copper and their capacity is higher than fiber optics. In fact metals are the easiest to manufacture for use, as electrical conductors. Crystals made as an alternative for batteries would be pretty simple for factories to produce, and they wouldn’t require raw ores to be mined in the quantities that is required to produce metals.

3. Crystals compared to metals have several advantages right off the bat. They are lighter (weight), they have virtually unlimited (depending on quality) recharges. and they are just as versatile in terms of shaping the to a battery mold. Crystals prepared in the correct way will provide a higher output for the equivalent conventional battery of the same weight. Higher output means either smaller battery size or more high power applications for batteries.

4. They can in some circumstances recharge themselves as the medium of crystal itself generates the electricity as the electrons flow within it. Thus they constantly chase their own tail moving around the crystal and perpetually generate electricity. Thus a significantly longer life span for these types of battery is a great alternative for those currently being used. Also the need to recharge is greatly reduced thus it would be a case of “do you want to use battery or use mains power” and no charging would be part of the “using battery power” process. No recharging, or at much longer intervals of maybe months, superb.

Crystals are light sensitive and they store light energy much like a solar panel, so if after a few months of use all that is required is a little sunlight to rejuvenate them, then that could be built into there design as a transparent casing or some other suitable design solution.

This is well worth some exploration as a power alternative for electrically powered devices.

Love & Light,

One.

Future Computing

2011-07-03T21:49:41Z

What are the limits of current computing in terms of hardware? Well the limits actually are the hardware! When it’s time to upgrade your computer (laptop / iPhone / tower system / netbook / pda), the reasons usually are that the components cant handle the the software you’re trying to run, right?

Okay for you guys that know how a computer works, forgive me, but just hear me out here as I explain how these things work, in order to explain my solution.

There are 3 main parts to a computer ;

CPU:(central processing unit) this is the brain of the comptuer and does all the thinking. It’s usually made by Intel or AMD and is rated in a certain number of cores and a speed rating. The faster the processor, the faster your computer.

Memory: (often confused with storage), is a fast temporary storage device (RAM - random access memory) where programs are loaded so they can run through the processor.

Storage: this is where all data is permanently stored for loading into memory and then to the processor.

So why am I explaining these essential parts of a computer?

Well let us quickly look at each of these parts :

A CPU is basically an adding machine and a logic unit. It can do billions of calculations of numbers (adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing) every second and various logic operations.

Memory is a temporary storage device which has no moving parts so it doesn’t wear out, and is faster than a hard drive. It’s also referred to as a volatile storage device because it requires power to store data. If the power is disconnected, it loses the stored data and defaults to ‘empty’.

Hard drives are high capacity storage devices which are non-volatile, as in they retain the stored information when there is no power supply.

Ok so recently since around 2005 there has been a development which actually bridged the gap between memory and hard drives and this was the USB flash drive. It was, at the time, not as fast as computer memory but it was a non-volatile storage device, so it could store data / information just like a hard drive but was much more portable with no moving parts, and only required a small amount of power to function.

Now these flash drives have evolved into solid state drives (SSD’s) and are faster than hard drives, and soon they will be able to store more than hard drives too.

Flash storage is what my Future Computing is based around in essence. We will soon (if not already) have flash drives just as fast as memory and they will be able to function both as storage and as a memory location to hold running programs.

The other major part of my idea / invention is physical modeling. If you are a musician you will already be familiar with this concept. There are various studio effects, and 2” tape machines (the ones you always see in the music videos on MTV - Metallica’s “nothing else matters” is a classic example) which are so treasured that even though studio recording is all turning computer-based, people still want the sound of those physical pieces of equipment (see below - the original tape machine on the left and the computer plugin on the right).

So in order to give musicians a computer solution , they have “physically modelled” these products and created computer emulations which function just as the original equipment did in every way, including the sound. They are available as computer plugin effects (VST, AU, RTAS, etc). It’s not just the music industry which is physically modeling hardware, there are many emulators for old computers that let you play old Atari games on your PC or Mac. These emulators make the Atari game think it’s in an arcade game machine by imitating the CPU of that particular arcade game, and you even have to hit the credit button so the game thinks you’ve put money in the machine!

So here we have the beginnings of the necessary technology to impliment two ideas:

Fast storage which can act both as memory, and as a hard drive.
Physical modelling which can dictate the type of computer you need to use (emulate).

This is my Idea :

Have a computer which has minimal parts.
A computer which consists mainly of a controller chip, albeit an advanced controller chip!!
And large banks of fast flash storage.

The controller chip will manage the flash storage, input and output peripherals, and the emulation programs.

Companies could physically model many types of computer; servers, games consoles, ipods, cash machine, tills (cash register), pda’s, mbile phones, iPads, anything computerised that you can think of!! Then the hardware would be fairly simple. A keyboard or touchscreen input and the standard controller chip and fst flash memory.

Depending on the device you needed, for example a till / cash register in a supermarket, you could have a physically modelled standard till / cash register emulation. The supermarket would buy several standard looking tills / cash registers, and then buy the emulation software from the manufacturer. When there was an upgraded till / cash register they would simply buy the upgraded emulation which could be a totally redesigned model, and it would effectively give then the latest type of till / cash register just buy purchasing the new software. If they were touchscreen tills / cash registers, the button layouts could be totally redesigned as well, no limits!!!

Here is the flexibility in action, as you have a dynamic storage and memory structure. For example you’re running a program that needs more memory? Ok some of your storage is allocated as memory, so now you have 8Gb of RAM instead of 4Gb, as the demands of the program (a game lets say…..space fighter, etc, etc) requires.

This dynamic memory/storage can also emulate a physically modeled graphics card with as much graphics memory as needed. These types and power ratings of these emulated devices are constantly variable depending on the demands of the application the user wishes to use.

Here are just some rough figures, I estimate roughly 1.4 Terrabytes of this memory/storage could fit in a current Macbook 13”. Less power is needed to run such memory chips so heating is not such a problem, iPad & iPhone manage fine and rarely get hot.

Say you need a server with mass storage and less memory, maybe a more basic processor? Ok this system will allocate the necessary modelled components to use! Simple! Can’t believe it hasn’t been done!

Some quick info allowing this type of computer to be feasable :-

Current conventional CPU’s are at their maximum speed. They can’t get any faster because electrons travel at a certain speed, and CPU’s /processors are now (and have been for a few years) actually limited by the time it takes electrons to travel from one side of the CPU to the other. They can’t get any faster without drastic cooling and other considerations which would start increasing computer sizes. That would be a backwards step. So now we have muliple cores and more storage on the CPU’s, and some controllers (memory controllers as in the i-5 & i-7 range of Intel CPU’s). Also we have 32-bits processing moving up to 64-bit (Apple did it a few years ago!).

They will develop new technologies and if the internal combustion engine is anything to go by, they will only improve existing frameworks and not move forward with new systems or types of computer. Basically they will turbo charge existing computing components maybe making them smaller, more efficient, but they will eventually reach an impasse. The car engine has not fundamentally changed for many years, and all they have done is improved a 100 year old design, and haven’t really changed it!

If current chips are at a max speed rating, then a simple controller chip would be fast enough to run an emulation of any chip in existence, providing the flash memory/storage was fast enough. Current speeds are up to 166 Mb per second about half the speed of current SATA II hard drives. And they are evolving & increasing the storage amounts and read/write speeds very quickly, it won’ t be long until they are fast enough for this type of computer.

Compatibility would only be limited by the software, (emulation programs) that you have in your library. Since DOS [Windows (really past it as far as an operating system base goes) ] and UNIX (Mac OS X among others), are only software anyway, so you could be running Mac OS X one minute and Windows 7 the next. Hopefully a new type of operating system would emerge which would be its own base, and much more of a look and feel rather than a limit for the OS programmers to utilise.

So my types of computer could use the fastest current CPU technology, as the controller chip. They would really only have to co-ordinate emulation software, be able to toggle Flash memory from storage state to memory state, and of course co-ordinate any types of Input/Output devices (keyboard, mouse etc). Speeds of the emulated components could be governed by their emulation software, but with little or no data bottlenecks!

C’mon people make it happen!

Remember I thought of it first, let’s move things forward!

Car Aerodynamics Idea

2011-06-25T13:50:09Z

Hello and Greetings to you all!

I have an idea regarding car aerodynamics, and this idea also covers any powered moving body whether moving on land, through the air, or in water.

The conventional way companies look at aerodynamics, seems backwards to me. Everything is based around forcing an object through the air and making it as easy for that object to force the air out of the way with mininmum power to do the job.

There are several things being overlooked here:

The air itself consists of vibrating / moving molecules. Do not overlook the makeup and properties of the medium which is impeding the movement of the vehicle.
The paint finish; The smoother the paint finish the easier it is to have these air molecules move along it’s surface. every car has a paint job regardless of it’s design, so the paint finish itself is impeding the movement of the air.

“What!?” I hear you exclaim! “So you have figured out something ALL the car companies have overlooked!!?” Well I think so, firstly if you are moving though a crowded street like in a major city in rush our, do you change your shape so you can surf through the people the quickest? This is what car manufacturers do, they make the car shape the best for forcing the air out of the way. (image for illustration purposes only)

Here is a fundamental error! most of our teachings & learnings are based around “Force!”. Our perception is the only way to move things is to force them to. Try forcing people out of the way on a busy street! It is possible to do this, but not the best way to move through the crowd, I think you would agree. What we actually do is use the co-operation of the people around us to help us move through the crowd. If we were running and the crowd was packed tightly (this is relatively what a car body is in relation to the air molecules around it), we would require great force if there were no co-operation from the people around us to let us through.

Point 1 : Air molecules as the people on a crowded street, need to co-operate with our car body to let us through in the easiest way with the least effort.

Imagine having the co-operation of all the people on that busy street so they are parting and then assuming their original path as you moved along as if you were surrounded by a clear invisible bubble. You could run along that street as if they weren’t even there! Imagine how that would transform travel as we know it! Cars moving as if there was no air slowing the car down! Amazing!

Ok so the most fundamental thing to overcome; movement through the air, has been realised. Next is the paintwork on the car. So all cars have paint finishes on them, they are powder based for consistent even coverage. Some are dipped in an electrically charged bath of primer and finishing coats for extra anti-corrosion coverage, (reaching more areas than spraying could therefore no unpainted surfaces where rust can occur).

Paint technology has come along nicely in it’s various colours, and finishes : Candy, Chameleon, Metallic etc. If you look at a smooth surface under the microscope or electron microscope, you will find that the surface closely resembles a mountain range! The picture below is of a car paint pigment.

Coloured scanning electron micrograph (SEM) of Paliocrom orange pigment, which is mainly used for vehicle paints. (image for illustration purposes only)

Smooth is only smooth relative to us humans, but other small paticles such as air molecules will have a hard time moving over a rugged style surface at great speed without it’s co-operation, and even with it’s co-operation, its still a very bumpy path to say the least!

The answer here is:

Make the surface smooth relative to the air molecules / partilcles and create an easier path and therefore less resistance to the air & rain snow etc.

This will also lower car maintainance and dirt paricles will no longer have nice crevices to accumulate in and make the car dirty / rusty etc. How can this be done? Well the answer is simple, we already have the technology in products like Rain-x, all we have to do is put more money into researching our existing paint technologies.

The Science Bit

To any scientist reading this may seem like it’s rather naively put, without a scientific background. To that I say, this : The most fundimental part of this information, or a soft jabbing with my elbow, to you the scientific creators, is that the behaviour of particles when they are travelling over a microscopically smooth, perhaps nano-smooth surface will act in an altogether unexpected and very beneficial manner reducing drag so much, as we will only need half the size / power of our engines. These are the areas where research is somewhat easy to begin as all of these technologies exist, they are simply not being applied in the right areas in the right way.

Also once we are capable of comfortably reducing drag by that amount and of course fuel consumption, we can then work on electrical ways to direct airflow as to produce desired roadholding like we now archaically use spoilers for. We could also shape the surface of the paint (nano shaping) to produce downforce / desired airflow, similar to ground effect. We all know how weather conditions can be magnified or diffused depending on the terrain the wind/rain/snow is moving over. The nano shaping could give or aid to this effect on air moving across a car body. We could even have air flow be very easy over a cars body apart from the areas we want the air flow to push the car into the road (for more grip). This would mean less or no spoilers needed, and no drag indroduced to produce downforce. It also mean a return to flamboyant car design , as the shape of the car would be much less important as aerodynamics would be advanced enough to make the car aerodynamic, regardless of shape!

Love & Light,

One.