Canadian girl invents flashlight powered by body heat

A fifteen-year-old girl and high school junior in Canada, Ann Makosinski has created a flashlight that can be powered only by the heat from your palms.

Ann invented this flashlight as her science project and it is enough to earn her a spot in Google Science Fair finals where she will compete against 14 other contestants.

She discovered that heat generated by the body is wasted and was brainstorming about how it would be harnessed for human benefit.

She thought of a flashlight that would run off the heat of the hand and that was the main objective of her science project. She observed that this could be achieved by the use of Peltier tiles. How? The Peltier tiles generate heat when it is heated on one side of it and cooled on the other side of it.

How did she make this work? She decided that making a hollow case of the flashlight with peltier tiles where the outer side will be heated by human hand and the inner side will be cooled by cold from the environment is applicable.

After carrying out these steps, she discovered the peltier tiles are capable of powering the LEDs used for the flashlight but they were not producing enough voltage. She solved this by adding a transformer to the circuit to boost the voltage and there, you have your flashlight powered by heat of your hand.

It is reported that the flashlight cost her about $26 to make but she claims that would be cheaper if produced in mass scale. Added to it, there is an advantage that it uses renewable energy so the cost of batteries is out of it. The only potential disadvantage is that it works better in cool environments.

The flashlight was able to maintain light for 20 minutes. She could win $50,000 if she emerged as the winner of Google Science Fair in September.

Posted in Gadgets