upworthy

Technology

Technology

A student accidentally created a rechargeable battery that she says could last 400 years

"This thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going." ⚡️⚡️

Steve Zylius/University of California, Irvine.

UCI doctoral candidate Mya Le Thai has developed a nanowire-based technology that allows lithium-ion batteries to be recharged hundreds of thousands of times.

There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

A team of researchers at UCI had been experimenting with nanowires for potential use in batteries, but found that over time the thin, fragile wires would break down and crack after too many charging cycles. A charge cycle is when a battery goes from completely full to completely empty and back to full again.

But one day, on a whim, Thai coated a set of gold nanowires in manganese dioxide and a Plexiglas-like electrolyte gel.

batteries, renewable energy, energy, renewable batteries, rechargeable batteries, innovationBatteries being recycled at WRWA, London. Nov ‘21Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash

"She started to cycle these gel capacitors, and that's when we got the surprise," said Reginald Penner, chair of the university's chemistry department. "She said, 'this thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it's still going.' She came back a few days later and said 'it's been cycling for 30,000 cycles.' That kept going on for a month."

This discovery is mind-blowing because the average laptop battery lasts 300 to 500 charge cycles. The nanobattery developed at UCI made it though 200,000 cycles in three months. That would extend the life of the average laptop battery by about 400 years. The rest of the device would have probably gone kaput decades before the battery, but the implications for a battery that that lasts hundreds of years are pretty startling.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

“Mya was playing around, and she coated this whole thing with a very thin gel layer and started to cycle it,” said Penner added. “She discovered that just by using this gel, she could cycle it hundreds of thousands of times without losing any capacity.”

“That was crazy,” he added, “because these things typically die in dramatic fashion after 5,000 or 6,000 or 7,000 cycles at most. ”"The big picture is that there may be a very simple way to stabilize nanowires of the type that we studied," Penner said. "If this turns out to be generally true, it would be a great advance for the community." Not bad for just fooling around in the laboratory.

Since her discovery, Mya Le Thai has gone on to a successful career as the Principal Scientist with the Enevate Corporation,

This article originally appeared eight years ago.

From Your Site Articles
energy
Culture

People share useless facts that simply won't leave their heads

Photo by Sean Benesh on Unsplash

Some facts are only useful for trivia contests.

Ah, useless facts. Random knowledge that serves no purpose other than to take up space in our brains, and maybe, just maybe, win a trivia game (yeah right) or kill time at a party.

Leave it to Ask Reddit to resurface all things odd and amusing, though. People shared their own useless facts that live rent free in their heads. And though they might be pointless, they are certainly entertaining.

Without further do:

  Mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell.

Yep, this useless fact has stayed with us since elementary school. On the bright side, it’s been the source of many a fun meme.

Vending machines are more deadly than sharks.

Gif of a zombie vending machine in a graveyardanimation domination lol GIF by gifnewsGiphy

Think about this next time you go to retrieve a Snickers bar: Between 2002 and 2015, the National Electronic Surveillance System reported that vending machines caused four deaths per year in the U.S. Mostly due to people tipping the machines onto themselves.

Compare that to the shark-related deaths averaging out to just 0.6 deaths per year. Not sure how only about half of a person is considered dead, but math was never my strength.

This statistic might need to be taken with a grain of sea salt, however, given that those in landlocked states have next-to-zero chances of experiencing a shark attack. But there you have it, a useless fact to use when you’re at the beach.

Snails have teeth.

Gif of a snail biting someone's fingerhorror finger GIF by absurdnoiseGiphy

“They’re not big enough teeth to hurt humans. That’s what makes it a useless fact to know. & it won’t leave my head because it’s juuuuuust disturbing enough to make me rethink my entire opinion on snails.” – ghosts-go-boo

But cows do not.

At least, no upper front teeth. Makes chewing—and dentist visits—easier I suppose.

The Sun is about 400 times bigger than the Moon but also about 400 times farther away from Earth. So they look to be about the same size.

A black and white photo of a solar eclipse

A solar eclipse.

commons.wikimedia.org

This explains how the sun can be completely blocked in an eclipse.

Pigeons and doves are in the same bird family.

Gif of animated pigeons standing next to breadHappy Animation GIF by sahlooterGiphy

Columbidae is a subspecies of birds that are stout bodied, with short necks, and primarily feed on seeds, fruits and plants. Though one lives on as a symbol of peace and love, and the other is often considered a flying rat, the names are practically interchangeable.

However, thinking about Stevie Nicks singing, “just like a white-winged pigeon” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it.

The length of a jiffy…

Gif of the Doc Brown from Back to the Futureback to the future great scott GIFGiphy

According to ScienceFocus.com, physicists use a “jiffy” to define how long light takes to travel one femtometer (which is a tiny fraction of a millimeter). In layman’s terms, one jiffy equals one-fiftieth of a second.

So next time you say, “be back in a jiffy,” know that you better return really, really, really fast.

Most corn is inedible for humans.

corn cob on teal surface

Who knew?

Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash

“1% of the corn grown in the USA is sweet corn (the corn you eat as corn). The other 99% is field corn (or dent corn), which is fairly inedible raw and needs to be processed before human consumption. This field corn is also what they use for non-edible corn products, like ethanol, paint, cosmetics, etc. Yes, most corn goes to livestock feed. Ethanol and High Fructose Corn Syrup are up there as well. Yes, if you're driving on a highway and are passing fields of corn, you very likely cannot eat it.” – Kat_lbltko1pl

Infants have flexible bones.

Gif of stretching baby in diaperstretching GIF by AFV BabiesGiphy

Ever wonder why toddlers seem so much more flexible? This is because a baby’s skeleton is very different from an adult's. Babies are born with about 300 bones (94 more than adults) that are joined together with pliable cartilage to make that whole birth thing possible. As they get older, the bones will fuse together. And suddenly that toe touch is nothing but a distant dream of the past.

Numbers from 1-999 don't have the letter "a" in word form.

white printing paper with numbers

Sorry if your math teacher never told you.

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

Some vowels just don’t get the respect they deserve.

John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald are both known by three names. And each full name is composed of 15 letters.

Gif of Milhouse dressed as Abraham Lincoln behind textsurprised season 4 GIFGiphy

Actually, this is not entirely correct. Oswald’s full name was not used until after Kennedy’s assassination, due to his habit of adopting false names.

Cockroaches molt.

Unlike a reptile shedding it’s skin, cockroaches molt out of their entire exoskeleton. Out crawls a soft, fleshy, ghostly-white creature that will turn brown over a few hours. You’re welcome for the nightmare fuel.

There you have it. Gems of wisdom no one asked for. They say knowledge is power. But in this case, I’d say knowledge is unnecessary. But still fun!

This article originally appeared three years ago.

From Your Site Articles
Related Articles Around the Web
interesting
Science

People just realized the Calculator app keeps history & share their most embarrassing calculations

It's OK, we can all be idiots together.

jeffersonjohn14/TikTok & Unsplash

We've all done it in secret when we think no one's looking. We inconspicuously pull out our phone, give one more sideways glance to make sure no one can see our screen, and then we open up our Calculator app just to make sure 6 plus 3 really does equal 9 before confidently announcing it out loud. You can never be too sure.

It's OK! No one has to know that we don't have faith in ourselves to do even simple arithmetic that comes second-nature to most elementary schoolers. Those moments of self-doubt are our little secret. Or, at least we thought they were.

A viral TikTok, however, just announced a major development: The Calculator app on iPhone keeps track of your history.

It's been hiding in plain sight this entire time, and suffice it to say, but people are shook.

"Yall please remember to clear your CALCULATOR history every once in a while," user jeffersonjohn14 captioned. "My bf just saw mine and would have rather him gone thru my internet history."

In the text caption to the post, the user wrote "3+8??????" implying that at some point they had to be extra sure they could properly add to 11, and were mortified by the idea that someone might find out.

I had to double check to confirm that this is true, and unfortunately, it is. If you're an iPhone user and you look at the upper left hand corner of your Calculator app, there's a small hamburger menu that you probably never bothered noticing before. Open it up and you'll see your calculations from the last 30 days or so. Why does the Calculator app save all your formulas for a month? Who knows — but this is your warning to go in there and delete anything egregious before someone you respect sees it.


If you have embarrassing calculations in your Calculator history, it's OK: You're not the only one.

Not only were viewers of the now-viral TikTok flabbergasted to know the truth, many of them seemed surprised at what they found in their own histories.

Here are some of the best responses:

1x10.. it was a difficult day!

3+3 the other day

Nah why I got 35-1 in mine

Damn mine really said 18-3

5x2 😆 what the heck was I doing

I just checked mine and the last one was 15 x 2 🤣 why am I like this


calculator app on phone sitting on top of documents Photo by Jakub Żerdzicki on Unsplash

And if you're someone who doubts the intelligence of the average TikTok user, how about this comment from someone who should definitely be above using an app for simple calculations:

As a math major, having 100x2 in my calculator history is just embarrassing

It seems that people of all ages and backgrounds fall victim to the same phenomenon: We know the answer to basic addition and subtraction questions, but sometimes we just want to be extra sure.

It could be chalked up to a fear of being wrong (announcing the wrong answer to a group), or maybe it's a lack of practice with basic arithmetic that makes us doubt ourselves. Maybe it's deeper than that, where we want to really see something with our own eyes to before we believe that it's true, like the way we look for other people to confirm or even shape our thoughts and opinions.

Whatever the reason, I found it reassuring and heartwarming just how many people chimed in to share their own calculator fails. We really are all in this together!

And if you do regularly use a calculator for basic addition and subtraction that you know how to do in your head? There's no shame in that.

In fact, some educators argue that kids should be allowed to use calculators more often in school so that, instead of drilling computation over and over, they can spend more time on critical thinking and problem solving skills. Calculators can allow you to solve problems on your own and even explore numbers creatively (ever randomly wonder what 38239 * 77771223 is? Now you can find out!) They also, obviously, allow us to get the right answer, and sometimes it's better to be accurate than to protect your ego. After all, your waiter at the restaurant would prefer you leave a good tip — even if you need to use your phone to double check what 20% of 100 is.

From Your Site Articles
phones
Pets

When their owner collapsed on a mountain trail, these dogs coordinated a rescue plan

Dogs are smarter than we think.

via Keswick Mountain Rescue Team/Instagram

The dogs that saved the day.

Dogs are keen observers of the human condition. They can become very attuned to our daily behaviors and have the ability to recognize our facial expressions. A dog's amazing sense of smell also gives them a unique window into our health and emotions.

A dog's sense of smell is up to 10,000 times more sensitive than a human's. That gives them the ability to notice if we are ill by recognizing the changes in our body chemistry. They can also tell if we're depressed by noticing changes in our feel-good hormone levels. It's why dogs are known for nuzzling up to people when they feel down.

In short, dogs are much smarter than we realize.

A pair of dogs in England knew when something was wrong with their owner, and they just may have saved his life.

A 71-year-old man was walking his two dogs, a golden retriever and a lack labrador, one weekend in October 2021when he became unconscious and collapsed. The man and the dogs were hiking through Braithwaite How, a mountain summit in the Cockermouth to Newlands region in the northern part of the country.

Braithwaite How has an elevation of 564 feet.

After their owner fell to the ground, the two dogs broke up into a rescue team. The black labrador ran down the trail and found a hiker who had walked past them a few minutes before. The labrador barked and motioned for the woman to follow it down the trail.

While one dog was out getting help, the loyal golden retriever stayed by the man's side to protect him and keep him company. How's that for teamwork?

When the woman found the man, the golden retriever was right by his side. She then called the emergency number (999) for assistance.

The dispatcher summoned the Keswick Mountain Rescue Team who sent out a team of 12 people. By the time they arrived, the man had regained consciousness and felt well enough to walk down the hill into an awaiting ambulance. He was then taken to the hospital for further checks.

The rescue team was amazed that his dogs were able to coordinate a two-dog rescue plan to keep him safe. They thanked them for their bravery on Facebook.

"Many thanks to the passing walker and the amazing dogs," the rescue team wrote.

The man who collapsed did a good job in picking the right dogs to accompany him on a hike. Labradors are known to be one of the smartest dog breeds and golden retrievers are among the most loyal.

Let's hope that both dogs got a bowl full of treats when they got home that night because they are a wonderful example of why dogs are known as "man's best friend."


This article originally appeared three years ago.


From Your Site Articles
dogs
Trending Stories