Brownian motion is one of those things that's been stuck in my mental lint trap for years. I remember reading a science fiction novel when I was a teen where a Starship used Brownian motion as the basis for its random evasive maneuvers.

Later I remember finally reading Fantastic Voyage and thinking about Brownian motion rocking the Proteus as it waited in the syringe before being injected into the bloodstream of the doctor.

Now this, energy from Brownian motion, which was supposed to be impossible.....

Physicists build circuit that generates clean, limitless power from graphene

 

Edited February 25, 20224 yr by HiFlyer

I don't like watching videos so here's the original press release from the University of Arkansas:

https://news.uark.edu/articles/54830/physicists-build-circuit-that-generates-clean-limitless-power-from-graphene

Dated October 2020 - and I don't think we've heard any more about it since until this you-tuber picked it up again.

Technically it's an interesting feat - harvesting useful energy over a short period of time that could power intermittently-operating micropower sensors.  There's nothing really new about this except that using graphene with its large mechanical fluctuations, the quantity extracted may actually be useful. It's definitely a transient phenomenon, however -  it certainly isn't a "limitless power source", in fact they don't make that claim themselves (though the you-tubers do).   As stated in the abstract to their own paper, "Numerical simulations show that the system reaches thermal equilibrium and the average rates of heat and work provided by stochastic thermodynamics tend quickly to zero. " 

That's if they've actually done it, of course.  Other warning bells are sounded by a couple of other statements in the press release, including

"People may think that current flowing in a resistor causes it to heat up, but the Brownian current does not."

and

The team’s next objective is to determine if the DC current can be stored in a capacitor for later use.

I mean, seriously, they say they have DC and they don't know if they can store it in a capacitor?  If they haven't performed any time-averaging, even on the shortest practically useful scale, then it really isn't going anywhere.

Still, it's cool (pun intended) and may end up being useful.  My bets are with Brillouin and Feynman, however.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"

 

 

 

3 hours ago, lzamm said:

I don't like watching videos

It's nice to know I'm not the only one 🙂. Most of You Tube is just click-bait anyway.

2 hours ago, W2DR said:

It's nice to know I'm not the only one 🙂. Most of You Tube is just click-bait anyway.

 

Unfortunately, by not bothering to negotiate the click-bait you miss out on all the good stuff.

But Martin, you have to understand, life is too short to dance with ugly women. I can't believe that you think You Tube is "the good stuff". My two cats say minus 1000 cat points.

54 minutes ago, W2DR said:

But Martin, you have to understand, life is too short to dance with ugly women.

 

But dance with her and she may turn out to be a trillionaire that fancies you. And there are plenty of less than attractive women with more than just looks to offer. 

 

54 minutes ago, W2DR said:

I can't believe that you think You Tube is "the good stuff"

 

You made that up. I didn't say that. YouTube is clearly the amazing stuff, the good stuff, the mediocre stuff, the bad stuff and the diabolical stuff all contained in one package. 

Pretty easy to head straight to PBS Spacetime or one of the other science channels and find amazing stuff. That applies to any of your interests. Quite easy to avoid the dodgy stuff.

For example, my current efforts involve dealing with the DDR6X junction temp of my RTX 3090, a notorious issue. YouTube videos have been invaluable in researching pad replacement.

The above applies to pretty much anything. Personally I find it quite easy to avoid the distasteful stuff. 

If you don't put in a modicum effort though you get nothing in return.

Edited February 25, 20224 yr by martin-w

Nice work, but I am with @lzamm: this is not going to save us from climate change. I had a closer look at the actual article at

https://journals.aps.org/pre/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevE.102.042101

So far, the people who refer to this work are not looking into "limitless energy sources" 🙂

Peter

I've grown to hate click-bait content. I use the YouTube feature to 'not recommend this channel' and banish these folk.