[HN Gopher] Wooden floors rotted by fungi generate electricity w...
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       Wooden floors rotted by fungi generate electricity when walked on
        
       Author : Bluestein
       Score  : 6 points
       Date   : 2021-03-15 11:02 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.newscientist.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.newscientist.com)
        
       | Bluestein wrote:
       | "Fungi have helped scientists make a breakthrough in transforming
       | wood into a useful source of clean electricity, which could one
       | day lead to "energy ballrooms".
       | 
       | The possibility of applying pressure to wood to produce an
       | electric charge, known as the piezoelectric effect, has been
       | discussed since the 1940s and 1950s. However, the vanishingly
       | small amount of electricity the process produces has held back
       | the idea.
       | 
       | Now, a team led by Ingo Burgert at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, has
       | discovered how to tweak the internal structure of balsa wood to
       | make the piezoelectric output 55 times higher. The solution was
       | to deliberately rot the wood."
        
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       (page generated 2021-03-16 23:01 UTC)