[HN Gopher] Wooden floors rotted by fungi generate electricity w... ___________________________________________________________________ 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." ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-03-16 23:01 UTC)