Step by Step with a New Design On the Block? No.
Walkin' on Sunshine? No.
So many punarific ways I could go here, but I'm not going to do it...
Ever live underneath a dance studio? Ever had bad enough neighbors that it felt like it?
People-powered "Crowd Farms" are growing more and more popular, harnessing the power of movement and motion created in every day situations. If you've ever experienced the aforementioned stomping, imagine the energy generated by 1000 commuters in a subway station.
Two graduate students from MIT’s Department of Architecture have figured out a way to harness all that movement and use it as a source of sustainable energy. James Graham and Thaddeus Jusczyk proposed that energy micro-generation is the wave of the future, soon surpassing large power plants in energy production, by creating a chair that exploits the passive act of sitting for power generation. The weight of the body on the chair spins a flywheel, powering a dynamo that lights four LEDs, putting to use some of the energy that is usually dissipated into the surrounding architecture.
I have a Liberal Arts degree. Would you like fries with that?
Although the article states the application would not work in residential situations since, "a single human step can only power two 60W light bulbs for one flickering second," it does state that if you "get a crowd in motion, multiply that single step by 28,527 steps...the result is enough energy to power a moving train for one second."
Think Vegas strip. Grand Central Station. Mall of America. Fried Twinkie line at the Ohio State Fair.
Somebody get these boys some seed money.
