Researchers from Canada have developed a device that collects energy from regular jaw movements and generates electricity. This means that one day we could recharge them smartphone just chewing on a gum.
Is your battery running low? No problem. Run at the nearest fast food, or at the nearest kiosk and start chewing.
In a paper published in the issue of Smart Materials and Structures last week, Canadian scientists explain that the device can be charged with a strap that the owner wears on the chin and includes integrated electrodes. So during meals, you can charge the appliance.
The bad news, according to Smart Materials and Structures, is that during an experiment, in a small meal, the energy produced was just 10 μW. In simple terms, the discovery needs to go a long way to fully exploiting the mandible.
"Given that the average power available from chewing is about 7 mW, we still have a long way to go before we can perfect the performance of the device," Aidin Delnavaz of the Canadian Institute of Physics told Science Daily.