Friday, April 11, 2008

I Have the Power

Lately I've been reading up on solar and wind power, and the more I read the more I realized how dumb I am about electricity. Being dumb about electricity I started with some basics. Basics like how a generator works. After seeing the video I thought to myself, "I have seen something like that before."

Low and behold I was right. A case fan looks just like a generator. Immediately I stripped some wires and busted out with my multimeter to discover I can indeed create electricity by spinning a case fan by hand. In fact, I could power an LED with it.

All of this thinking about electricity has helped me decide on my major at school. While English is interesting, and I still plan to write, electronics is what my heart desires.

Speaking of power, that picture was taken with my old school Sony Digital Mavica. I found a battery for it on Ebay for all of $6 after shipping. Still works great, but it's too bad it only stores pictures on a floppy disk (observe the craptacular quality).

EDIT: Hey I made a video!

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