Generate electricity using body heat | Live Experiments (Ep 46) | Head Squeeze

Jamie Gallagher takes a look at thermoelectric power with this simple demo using different temperatures.






Our resident science demo thrill-seekers will give the YouTube audience their big science treat each week with an experiment where you can find out how to make food dance, power a light bulb with household objects and create mega smoke rings!

[jamiegallagher]

Hey! Thanks for all the great comments, I want to try and answer some of them and give you some more info.

Some of you have said that the voltage is low and its true, its not very high but imagine using this to recharge a battery. You could be charging that battery every second of the day and even if it is only a little you are constantly topping it up!

Some of the areas we're looking at- scavenging waste heat from people, cars or even factories. They can be as big or as small as you like!

[kedwardsTWO]

I haven't seen this method of producing electricity before. Thanks for introducing me to it!

[jamiegallagher]

One of my favourite uses for them is powering the Mars rover and the Voyager space probes. They were sent up with a red hot nuclear sources and some thermoelectric modules that absorb the waste heat and convert it to electricity.
I love the idea of thermoelectric clothes though! It is already used in watches. The effect works in reverse if you look in the back of the tiny little 2 litre fridges. Open one up and you'll spot a thermoelectric module in the back! CLEVER THINGS

[MarcelPhosph]

thanks! god bless these awesome channels and the active user community! :D

[heberatondo]

we can make a wall made out of this things and in the winter the cold will cool one side while the other side heats because of the heater and we'd have electricity :D 

[aidanmood]

where can I get the thermoelectric module?

[loyseugene]

Those modules use to be in some 12volt drink coolers/ warmers because if you apply current one side gets hot and the other cold. reversing polarity changes the hot and cold sides.

[nickrich]

.. nice demo .. what about large scale ? ... enough to charge an e-bike for example .. what kind of apparatus or just impractical?

[adimi]

what about creating a full body suit with tiny hardware like this, would it be possible to create electrity to charge devices and perhabs an artificial heart as a backup source of power?

[MarcelPhosph]

What happens if I use a Peltier/Thermoelectric device this way: stick one side to the CPU of my computer, and the other side to the heatsink. The wires go to the fan that stays on the heatsink. Will that produce electricity in order to move the fan?

Because of his explanation, I would think yes, because one side would be hot (CPU side), and the other cold (heatsink side; cold relative to the other side).

So?

[vicjagsingh]

This is awesome... wow. Learn something new everyday

[KatleinaTrancy]

it's They done a bit of science! :D

[Dyslexic-Artist-Theory-on-Time]

Very interesting! A video on geothermal energy would be a good idea!
By the way this is an invitation to see an artist theory on the physics of ‘time’ as a physical process!

[MarcelPhosph]

Well.. that's kinda spot on :D I want to try to cool my Raspberry Pi this way, because sometimes I get my CPU very hot and I don't have any type of cooling at the moment. I'd build a small aluminum heatsink with a small cooler, and I'd place a Peltier between it and the CPU. I guess there's nothing that could go wrong, as the Pi works even without cooling it..

[wdbaudio]

they are also known as peltier coolers if anyone is interested :)

[bachirontzki]

My dad gave a watch about 2 decades ago that charges from the heat of your arm so it basically never needs a battery change, so it was and probably still is used commercially. The main problem is that phones and especially smartphones use much much more energy than a watch, they are small computers after all. Let's suppose you use an entire winter coat to power it, the heat instead of being trapped in the coat to keep you warm will be lost therefore defeating the original purpose of the coat.

[dolph]

Curiosity uses a different kind of thermoelectric generator using nuclear fuels. That way it can't really run out of power for hundreds of years, and by heating up water and pumping it out in small pipes it prevents the movable parts from freezing.

[melvinhuang]

how can I increase the current from the thermoelectric ? Is that any current booster ? 

[jamiegallagher]

I don't know what kind of power an ebike uses but I expect rather a lot. I don't think it would be practical to charge such a large device from a human body but you can add thermoelectrics into solar panels to get more efficiency so that is an option if you build a station.
Even ignoring all this: "how big" depends on Temp of hot side, temp of cold side, type of material inside, size of material. Many things. Can be tailored to situation.

[therealmediator]

When metal gets hot the electrons get energetic whilst the cold side has slow electrons causing a negative and positive side much like a battery...