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Science for the Public Presents Contemporary Science Issues and Innovations - 10/24/23
Updated 7 days ago

Harvesting Electricity Out Of Thin Air: The air contains an enormous amount of electricity. Clouds are full of it. But how to actually capture it for a continuous energy resource? Dr. Jun Yao and his colleagues at UMass-Amherst have created a small-scale cloud they call the “generic Air-gen effect” that produces a reliable stream of electricity that can be harvested for general use. Dr. Yao describes how the Air-gen innovation was developed, how the electricity is harvested from the air via a special material made of protein nanowires, and when the device can be scaled up for general use. 00:29:42