revolutionary charger - only 20 secs required ... Esha Khare wins Intel Award

Teenager Esha Khare would soon be hailed, remembered and appreciated everyday…

With every technological advancement, problems also galore.  Mankind contrives to have fresher trouble. How soon people forget that in India a couple of decades ago, there was no mobile phone…… only landlines ~ not all had or could afford a telephone at their residence… in Office, people called – the intended recipient may not be at desk – may have gone out, still people communicated, work was indeed happening at a fast pace.

Then came a techno marvel called ‘pager’ ~ can you imagine that the basic model was only numeric i.e., one can convey only numbers – the advanced version was alpha-numeric – it was never as luxurious as the modern day SMS – there were service providers. One had to call the service provider and tell them the message that is to be paged – they would record and send the message to the recipient – much like a telegram but delivered electronically – and naturally one had to be short.  The pager was a dedicated RF or radio frequency device that allowed the pager user to receive messages broadcast on a specific frequency over a special network of radio base stations.   History has it that the first pager-like system was used by Detroit Police Department in 1921; officially patented in 1949 and came to India much later in the 1990s.  

In those days of letters, telecalls, trunk calls and STDs – people were still happy. Now some carry more than a single handset – there are handsets with multi SIMs – people are connected all the time, many do not remove the plugged wires even when walking on the road, driving ….~ and while travelling – many prefer to carry laptops, I pads, tablet pcs and more…………….. in a recent tour – a pilgrimmage – observed that many felt too constrained as they could not charge their mobiles – for some there is no life without mobiles and hence in travel, everywhere they are on the lookout for opportunity to charge their mobiles, rather than enjoy the atmosphere, food, or the place of visit……  now you have a new generation of impatient people, who huddle around an electric point to have their mobiles / laptops and other electronics charged….. it is common sight at Airport / railway stations / inside the train / hotels and even in small eateries – people who come in, ask for the power point – reach it brushing aside others to have priority ‘charge’…

Here is an interesting report from Daily Mail of a revolutionary device that has the potential to charge a cell phone within just 20 SECONDS…

A California teen has attracted the attention of tech giants Google for her potentially revolutionary invention which charges a phone in 20 seconds flat.The super-fast charging device has been dubbed a supercapacitor by 18-year-old Esha Khare, of Saratoga - as she took home $50,000 from the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, which took place in Phoenix this week. The device will make waiting hours for a phone to charge a thing of the past and the gizmo packs more energy into a smaller space than traditional phone batteries and holds the charge for longer.

Eesha Khare, 18, of Saratoga, Calif., received the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Award of $50,000 for the invention of a tiny energy-storage device. The supercapacitor is flexible and tiny, and is able to handle 10,000 recharge cycles, more than normal batteries by a factor of 10. So far, Khare has only used her supercapacitor to power a light-emitting diode or LED - but she sees a bright future that one day will see her invention powering cellphones, cars and any gadget that requires a rechargeable battery. Heading to Harvard, Khare told CBS San Francisco that this is only the start and that she will 'be setting the world on fire' from here.

'My cellphone battery always dies,' she told NBC News when asked what inspired her to work on the energy-storage technology. Specializing in nanochemistry allowed Khare to reduce the size of her invention. 'Really working at the nanoscale to make significant advances in many different fields.' Google have been in contact with Miss Khare to explore how she plans to change the makeup of cell phone battery life. 'It is also flexible, so it can be used in rollup displays and clothing and fabric,' Khare added.

'It has a lot of different applications and advantages over batteries in that sense.' The supercapacitor is flexible and tiny, and is able to handle 10,000 recharge cycles, more than normal batteries by a factor of 10. How an 18-year-old girl has managed to figure out something that multi-national corporations have not has led to her being flooded with offers for her amazing leap forward.

So, now you can travel more with assurance that ‘charging your mobile’ is not going to as difficult as it has been

With regards – S. Sampathkumar

21^st May 2013.

Photo and charger news courtesy : www.dailymail.co.uk