It’s fast. It can take you places. It’s going to be powered by your very own muscles.
This is what the vehicles are at the recently held Human Powered Vehicle Challenge.
This event was held at the Ames Research Center of NASA in California. And during this event, there were teams of engineering students from different challenges who showed up with their creations and ready to let their muscles do the job of giving power. There were 26 teams in all who joined up.
All those vehicles looked really weird with their wheels and all. Of course, it does not matter how good …read more

Darkness. On a Saturday.
Just recently, Sydney said no to global warming through a black out. And because of this, you would never have realized that you were in Sydney. The growing concern about global warming has reached heights so much so that large cities like Sydney are working out ways so as to get everyone involved and aware.
For an hour, all of Sydney was in darkness and its mayor, Clover Moore, did also say that all of the lights that were not that important were to be shut off. He also did say that this was Sydney’s way of “asking …read more

For 17 years, he may not have been speaking. But John Francis, 61 years old and an environment advocate, is making sure that everybody is listening to what he has to say.
He may not be able to shout out loud but he has already gained much fame in his area around the San Francisco Bay. He may be called weird but his tactic sure did make people listen up to his advocacy.
His time for silence has already passed and now he is letting people learn about what he strongly believes in and he now shares his thoughts and ideas through …read more

When our mobile phone’s juice runs out, we hurriedly rush to find our charger and make sure that we get the juices back to our trusty gadget. But with this new mobile phone charger from Millet, you sure would be quite happy knowing that you would not be using electricity. All you need is your own human power.
This mobile phone charger just needs a little winding up and it is created by Peter Storm. And since it is a wind-up gadget, you would most certainly be sure that it would be contributing to the pollution and the damage of our …read more

What is real human power?

This one is:

Yes, it is a generator that gets its power from humans. All you need to do is flex up your muscles. Mount up the gadget-slash-device and time to speed up.

This generator has been proven to actually produce just enough electricity to give power to your home. In fact, the creator of this human powered generator says that he does mount this generator every morning so as to make use of his electronic appliances.

The power generated from this one can reach up to 110v of AC which he can use for various things like LED …read more

I got an email from one of my readers Dave Askins and he showed me his DIY project. He built this human powered laundry spinner. According to him “it removed the wringing step from doing my laundry by hand “.
He got some inspiration from a salad spinner.

Examining the construction of the salad spinner, I realized I needed a giant perforated metal tub that I could spin inside a solid tub so that the water forced out of the laundry through centrepital force would collect on the inner wall of the solid tub, then …read more

At Oregon State University, 24 teams compete in the development of human powered water purification device. The device which can generate the highest amount of purified water in 1 hour wins.
Food coloring signified pollutants in the water. Using only human mechanical power, students had to bring the water to a boil, then condense the steam into purified water. The clean water would be colorless, proving the device worked.
These mechanical engineering students designed clever ways on achieving this result. One team actually used a stationary bicycle to power a motor, which provided electricity to a heating coil taken from …read more

So how does one give a mobile phone power and juice without having to use new batteries or using up electricity?
Well, there is a mobile phone charger in the market that actually makes use of the power of a human. It is a wind-up device so you can just wind the thing up and your mobile phone gets the power it needs. This just means that you can give your mobile phone power even if you are away from your home or office.
How does the wind up mobile phone charger work? Well, remember how your convential mobile phone chargers work? …read more

Toss this for about 10-12 times and this will get enough charge so you can listen to your favorite music for about an hour. This was the winning entry for the Pop-Sci Core 77 Design challenge.
This new concept has now become feasible due to advances and convergence of many key technologies. MP3 replaces the CD, MD and cassette as the musical medium of choice, not only because it is infinitely re-writeable, but also because it is so much smaller. The solid-state storage provides a solid skip-free environment from which the music can play in a shock-filled environment …read more

This thing rocks! I love push reel mowers, but when you’ve got over half an acre of lawn like I do, they become a bit tedious. Most of my neighbours may have big fancy gas-powered rider mowers, but I’d prefer one of these any day.
Unfortunately, I don’t know any welders. I wonder if I could make one with duct tape?
Photo is from the BikeMag.com forums via Hugg.