Researchers have discovered an unlikely source of renewable energy, the naturally-occurring cycle that is water evaporation. Scientists at New York’s Columbia University replicated this process in the laboratory and harnessed its energy to power tiny machines, one of which was a moving, miniature car. The team says the technology could potentially to be scaled up to one day draw power from huge resting bodies of water such as bays and reservoirs.
Its size and top speed is unlikely to land it a role in the next Fast and the Furious, but a car powered by water evaporation is a promising development
The research stems from work carried out last year by Ozgur Sahin, associate professor of biological sciences and physics at Columbia University. Sahin had discovered that when bacterial spores shrink and swell as a result of changes in humidity, that motion could be used to move other objects. He drew inspiration from his finding that, pound for pound, these spores actually pack more energy than some materials already used for moving objects in engineering. Read more
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