Researchers in Canada have developed a device that harvests energy from regular jaw movements and generates electricity. This means we could one day recharge smartphones by simply chewing a piece of gum.
Running out of battery? No problem. Run to the nearest fast food joint, or the nearest kiosk, and start chewing.
In a paper published in yesterday's issue of the journal Smart Materials and Structures, Canadian scientists explain that the device can be charged with a chin strap that the owner wears and will include integrated electrodes. So during meal times, you can charge the device.
The bad news, according to the journal Smart Materials and Structures, is that during one experiment, during a small meal, the energy produced was only 10 μW. Simply put, the discovery has a long way to go before the full utilization of the lower jaw.
“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 from the Institute of Physics of Canada told Science Daily.
