Infinite Electrical Power?

Today, I am challenging myself to see how man phones I can charge ONLY using renewable energy that I create myself. So anything that requires electricity, I have to either build or produce energy in a way that leaves as little to no environmental waste.

And before we get going big thank you to our sponsor Toyota! I am a legit Toyota fan. My first love was my 1991 MR2 Turbo that I got in high school and drove all through college only to be sold to attend Yale University for summer school. which is actually what got me into making YouTube videos!

I've also owned a Camry, a Celica, 2 Tacomas, 2 Priuses (or excuse me, 2 Prii) and currently a Tundra. And my all time favorite IS my 2022 Supra which is basically my first child (sorry, Lily). The thing I love the most about the company is their ability to combine engineering and technology. And now Toyota has gone above and beyond in technology advancements with a hydrogen powered Mirai. Before we get into how the car works, here are some other ways we can generate clean electrical power.


Build #1
First, we built a suit that could harness the power of the sun. We're dubbing it the solar suit. This suit is actually a wetsuit with individual solar panels wired in parallel, all connected to a rechargeable portable amplifier.

Solar panels work by using the photon particles from the sun to knock electrons through a series of grids, creating a small but usable form of electricity. The solar suit generated enough current to power some cell phones. In total we "charged" 20 phones at least one percent, which is our qualifying metric for the number of phones charged.

Build #2
Our second build was an item we've used before. This is a hyperbaric chamber, previously used for elephant toothpaste and giant bath bombs. We filled it with just water and added salt as well as some copper and zinc conductors

Here's how this works, when we place two different metals in the saltwater solution— zinc and copper in our case— one of the pieces of metal will lose electrons and the other will gain electrons. This process forms ions that build up on the surface of the metal. Eventually positive ions will move away from one metal and negative ions from the other. This creates a voltage difference between the two metals and allows electricity to flow. Our setup didn't have enough juice to directly power a phone, but it made a little fan spin, which is pretty impressive considering this is just a bunch of salt water!

So this salt water can't power my phone and surely doesn't provide enough electricity for a TV, home or vehicle... This is where Toyota comes in.

The Toyota fuel cell electric vehicle is powered by hydrogen, but there is no combustion in this car at all... literally none. The way the car actually moves forward is through its electric motor which is powered by hydrogen.

So now that we know that the car is actually battery-operated this then makes sense that the rest of the vehicle is designed much like a plugin with electric motors that engage the power train and ultimately move the wheels. Another really cool advantage to this hydrogen fuel cell vehicle is that unlike plug-ins that need to charge overnight or for a long time, the refill of the hydrogen tanks only takes 5 minutes.

Also, not hydrogen related, but this car is awesome. It feels like a luxury electric vehicle that has a sporty vibe to it and it's pretty tech-rich. You feel like you are living in the future when you drive it.


Build #3
Finally, for our last build, we took a bike and added a built-in generator that uses the rotational force of the wheel to conduct current. As I pedaled the bike, it pulled a gear to spin the tire wheels. This small generator is using built-in inverters. It turns the kinetic energy of your legs pedaling into usable energy.

Alright, so the grand total phones charged during our challenge was 21 which is pretty impressive considering the electricity was all renewable.

This video is one of 5 that we will be doing with Toyota, so make sure to hit that subscribe because we have some awesome experiments coming up!

Learn more about the Toyota Mirai: https://www.toyota.com/mirai/