CalTech Matters | Boomers Daily

Gao has developed a new way to power wireless wearable sensors: He harvests kinetic energy that is produced by a person as they move around.

“Our triboelectric generator, also called a nanogenerator, has a stator, which is fixed to the torso, and a slider, which is attached to the inside of the arm. The slider slides against the stator during human motion, and, an electrical current is generated at the same time,” Gao says. “The mechanism is quite simple. Friction results in electrical generation. This is not something new, concept-wise.”

This energy harvesting is done with a thin sandwich of materials (Teflon, copper, and polyimide) that are attached to the person’s skin. As the person moves, these sheets of material rub against a sliding layer made of copper and polyimide, and generate small amounts of electricity. The effect, known as triboelectricity, is perhaps best illustrated by the static electric shock a person might receive after walking across a carpeted floor and then touching a metal doorknob.

From a CalTech Matters online article:

Jessica Helfand Caltech Matters Credit - Maggie Peters — Jessica Helfand – Photo by Maggie Peters in Caltech Matters

“Observation is observation. Looking, listening, thinking, conjecturing … all original ideas begin with a kind of scrutiny that is at once framed by discipline and open to discovery. Because I have always taught students in a university, not in an art school, I think I have a baseline understanding of what it means to approach the visual world from a different place. Teaching non-artists is always a little bit like being a foreign exchange student. Therein lies the challenge—and, I suspect, the fun.”

January 7, 2020 – This month, artist, designer, and writer Jessica Helfand joins Caltech as the Winter 2020 artist-in-residence in the Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences’ Caltech-Huntington Program in Visual Culture, which is administered jointly by the division and The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Helfand is a former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Eye and Communications Arts magazines, and founding editor of the website Design Observer. She taught at Yale for two decades and has held artist residencies at the American Academy in Rome and the Bogliasco Foundation, among others. Her most recent book, Face: A Visual Odyssey, was published by MIT Press last fall. On January 16, Helfand will take part in a noontime talk with Bren Professor of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Biology Ralph Adolphs on the theme of the “face.”