If you haven’t heard of the Soccket you need to check it out.
My sister spent a few months in Kenya last fall doing volunteer nursing in a city called Ngong. Her home stay family was lucky enough to have power but only for short periods of time as the city would ration its power availability. At times there wasn’t a light on in the house except that coming from her homestay’s laptop if it had been charged earlier that day. Her homestay family would use the light from the laptop to study at night, as the mother was in the middle of attaining her Master’s degree and her son was attending college in a nearby city.
When I read the story of how the Soccket came about I thought about my sister and how she had experienced very similar events as did the four Harvard undergraduate students who created the ball. All four girls had spent time in parts of Africa and realized two very apparent things:
- Less than 20% of the continent has direct access to electricity
- Soccer is played ALL the time
The girls would often see children studying huddled near kerosene lanterns or under street lamps, as that was their only source of light. In an effort to find a way to solve this problem, they came up with the idea of creating a soccer ball that generates and stores electricity while you play with it. The stored electricity in the ball can then be used to light an LED lamp, or charge a cell phone or battery.
Brilliant… right?!
“The ball uses an inductive coil mechanism similar to those in shake-to-charge flashlights. The movement of the ball forces a magnet through a metal coil that induces voltage in the coil to generate electricity. Fifteen minutes of play can store enough energy to illuminate an LED light for up to three hours.”
Although they are still engineering the ball, it has received much media attention (ie. CNN, NY Times, Business Week) and recently received a Breakthrough Next Generation Award by Popular Mechanics.
Check them out on facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/soccket
