=============================================================================== blog.notryan.com/002.txt Wed, 22 Jan 2020 Ryan Jacobs 06:36:00 -0800 Some Candle Volts . . . . . . . . . =============================================================================== A friend laughed at me at a party when I told him that I get turned on by solid-state electronics. But I do! They're great for longevity. I hate relying on moving parts. Hard drives scare the shit out of me. Loud whirring fans annoy me to no end. They're cool and all, but *no moving parts* is the holy grail. Anyways, yesterday I received a pack of 10 Peltier junctions. Their primary purpose is to produce a temperature differential between the two sides, e.g. cool something without compression. But they work in both directions, kind of how like a motor can be driven with a voltage *or* produce EMF themselves when driven by an external force. Peltier junctions can be used used to create voltages from temperature differentials. I used one (along with some thermal paste and a beefy heatsink) to produce about 1.5 V from a lit candle I purchased from Target! Granted, the 1.5 V dropped to 0.6 V after a couple of minutes, as the temperature saturated the junction. Adding a little bit of water to the "cold" side using a dropper caused the voltage to bump back up to 1 V for about 30 seconds. A larger cooling body would probably allow you to harvest more energy until it saturated as well.