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'cubed' webzine

Anti-allergy parasite
Pancreas protector
Pop hit detector
Body Sensitive Cancer Treatment
Cheaper Smarter phones
Sports Training Tool
Light energy harvesting
Kitchen sink French
Clever cameras
Catalytic clothing
Smart surveillance
Super Broccoli
Kick and click
Pico secure access
Smartphone in Orbit
3D printed plane
Transmitting Data With Light
Brain cell bank
Energy for all seasons
Life-Saving Frogs
Dolphin Therapy
Rainbow money
In a Heartbeat
Restoring Speech
Safer Mosquitoes
Visualising Landscape Changes
Drumming Denim
Genetic clues for Alzheimer’s
Shower-Powered Radio
Assisted-Living Home
Fast-Scan Security
Keeping The Beat
Starfish non-stick drugs
Common Drug Could Reduce Cancer Risk
The Carbon Planet
3D Movie Tool
New Skin for Buildings
Pole Vaulting Pterosaurs
Bees Solve Problem
Rubber Tree Breakthrough
The Camouflage of Cats
Spotting PTSD
Spray on Clothes
The Biology of Thinking
Sphere TV
Driverless bus
Virtual London

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Shower-Powered Radio

Tapping wasted energy
‘I'm singing in the rain, just singing in the rain,’ are the unforgettable lyrics to the 1950s American musical of the same name and the perfect accompaniment to the Tango Group’s water-pressure-powered shower radio, called H2O. The concept is simple: fit the radio directly to the faucet of your shower, turn on the water and the water pressure will turn a minute turbine generator to provide a free energy source for your radio. A built-in rechargeable battery ensures the music and news continue after the water is turned off.

Vivian Blick, the Managing Director of Tango Group, the company responsible for H2O, has previously worked with the English inventor Trevor Baylis on his Freeplay wind up radio. Blick says they were looking for ways to find alternative free energy, ‘so I started where energy was being used everyday and wasn’t being fully utilised, it quickly came down to water.’

Turbine generator
Blick says it’s all about turning waste into energy. ‘The toilet flush, the washing machine, the bath, the shower, watering the garden,’ he says, ‘the water is waste once it’s left the tap, or the hose pipe, or the cistern, so why don’t we tap into that? We built a small turbine to test it and the easiest application to get across to the public was attaching it to the shower and using the running water to power a radio. It was all about getting a free ride out of something you’ve already paid for!’

Blick has lots of ideas to develop his water-powered concept. ‘Next year,’ he explains, ‘the radio will incorporate an LCD display of the average temperature of the water, how many litres of water your shower has consumed and how much power the shower has cost, giving you a total bill for every shower you take. It’s a fun way to take a shower but educational as well.’

bacteria culture © Alexander Raths - iStockphoto

Water-powered recharging
He compares the concept’s growth cycle to the wind-up radio, ‘it doesn’t take a lot to get to the next stage, where people might consider charging their mobile phones from pumped water. How many times do you flush the toilet everyday? The water is coming in under pressure, in the minute or so it takes to fill up the cistern, you may get ten minutes worth of energy.’

LearnEnglish Science activities
Why not do a language activity based on this cubed story, Shower-Powered Radio? You can double-click on any word on this page for a dictionary definition.

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