Ian's Page

We haven't figured out anything yet for our project yet but a few of our possible ideas are:
To make a motor using a variation of this design that will be able to create enough voltage to power the hotplate http://home.hiwaay.net/~palmer/motor.html

Another idea we had was to somehow construct a a motor somewhat similar to that and have it powered using a mousetrap via a string running from the arm wrapped around the axle, the only problem we saw with this is it wouldn't release the energy slow enough to have the hotplate sustain the heat to boil water.

The generator that we think is going to end up being our final generator is one of the handcranking variety and generates the PERFECT amount of voltage to power the hotplate, it has a very interesting gear mechanism that allows it to spin the coils very quickly multiple times with only one turn, read more about it here http://www.creative-science.org.uk/rshandgen.html

During my research overall most of the generators you find seem to need completed motors in order to generate the electricity, it has been relatively hard finding designs that use only coils and magnets instead of commercial DC motors

here's a video for your own enjoyment that shows a generator similar to the crank generator that uses a harddisk for the big gear, that gives me an idea, why not use a CD for the big gear? it sounds easier to me than to cut a circular piece of wood. the only problem that I see is the belt is pretty likely to fall off a CD, therefore it calls for some modifications

there also is some new research about thermoelectric generators (generators powered by body heat or some other source) it's pretty interesting, pretty sure it's not available for our project purposes but read about it here http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/body-heataand-power-002933.php

i've also found this as an excelent source for generators, http://www.creative-science.org.uk/6gen.html this is the same page that the excellent hand generators, all of them are fairly simple and seem to yeild excellent results.-

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