The University of Delaware has been working away at developing flexible batteries. “Imagine a world where cell phones and laptops can be charged in a matter of minutes instead of hours. And then rolled up and stored in your pocket, or dropped without any damage,” Prof Thomas H. Epps III enthuses. At the outer edge off possibilities, we could have footballs telling refs when they cross the line. Bendable football batteries would certainly add a new dimension to gridiron games.
Can We Have Bendable Football Batteries Now Please?
Not just yet, says Prof Thomas H. Epps III. That’s because we don’t have materials for flexible, impact resistant lithium batteries at this point. Although the University of Delaware has lodged a patent for a rubber-band-shaped battery, according to Inverse.Com. They must think these are coming. They enjoy it while being there.
Prof Epps likes to think outside the paradigm. He blames safety and stability issues for causing battery fires “when the goal is to push performance”. Now the prof is “an expert in designing and fabricating conducting membranes useful in energy generation and storage devices”. Moreover that’s according to the University of Delaware’s own official website and they should know.
The Secret Sauce behind the University of Delaware Patent
The Delaware University patent application envisages a future flexible polymer. This would combine viscous, molasses-like polyisoprene from rubber trees with one that is hard and brittle like polystyrene.
They believe they could create materials that “hold their shape but are impact resistant and stretchable” after combining these. If we could build them into batteries, we would free smartphones and laptops from rigid, rectangular batteries, he predicts. And this could be the first step towards bendable football batteries too.
However, that’s just the beginning of the potential for sport, where success depends so much on the bounce of a ball. However, we have a question hanging in the back of our minds. Would artificial intelligence running on bendable batteries improve the quality of the world’s greatest entertainment, sport? Or reduce it to the precision of yet another app we did not ask for?
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Preview Image: The Bounce of the Ball Fumbled
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