Wireless electricity

Subject: Wireless electricity Sat Mar 15, 2014 7:34 pm

Katie Hall was shocked the second she saw it: a light-bulb glowing in middle of a room with no wires attached.

Looking back, it was a crude experiment, she remembers: a tiny room filled with gigantic cooper refrigerator coils -- the kind you'd see if you cracked open the back of your freezer.

She walked in and out between the coils and the bulb -- and still the bulb glowed.

"I said: 'Let's work on this. This is the future.'"

What's the trick?

"We're going to transfer power without any kind of wires," says Dr Hall, now Chief Technology Officer at WiTricity -- a start-up developing wireless "resonance" technology.

"But, we're not actually putting electricity in the air. What we're doing is putting a magnetic field in the air."

It works like this: WiTricity build a "Source Resonator" -- a coil of electrical wire that generates a magnetic field when power is attached.

If another coil is brought close, an electrical charge can be generated in it. No wires required.

"When you bring a device into that magnetic field, it induces a current in the device, and by that you're able to transfer power," explains Dr Hall.

And like that, the bulb lights up.

More: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/03/14/tech/innovation/wireless-electricity/index.html

Wireless electricity

Wireless electricity

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