If we're talking about kids powering their own devices, I think the way to go is to turn "work" into play. The merry go round/hard bar swing would fit in this category.
So basically, let's look at activities where energy exerted is ambient anyway? What I mean is that the energy is being used up by the kids anyway, so why not tap into those. An example is to give them some variant of those "dance straps" meant to power cellphones before they go off to run and play during recess and lunch break. One way to tap into this would be to create new playground installation toys which can be used for harvesting energy. Q: how much abuse can a kinetic energy harvester withstand? A soccer of basketball has a lot of kinetic and impact energy bouncing around. I'd imagine that's too much abuse though, and whatever harvesting mechanism would break from the forces. Would piezo work there? I think I remember a concept where a dance floor would have piezo harvesters and when people dance on the tiles, they light up? Another problem is battery... how efficient and how much can a battery really store from these small bursts of energy? Sorry guys, I can't do math anymore since I got traumatized in college, so would appreciate it if these were translated into equation-less layman's terms. (btw, really appreciate the PDF human-powered energy harvesting! It was a really nice surprise that some of the solutions I'd been thinking off for years were in there :) ) -Naz -- carlos nazareno http://twitter.com/object404 http://www.object404.com -- core team member phlashers: philippine flash actionscripters http://www.phlashers.com -- poverty is violence _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list Devel@lists.laptop.org http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel