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OhGizmo!

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OhGizmo! » Archive » Water Powered Calculator Blows My Mind

Started by dponce80 · 3 months ago

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5 comments

Yocto
11 months ago

Water-powered cars... Believe me, you don't want to go there. There are enough backyard tinkerers and/or scammers baiting for investors. If their pseudoscientific delusions were only half-way consistent with basic physical reality, you'd already drive one. And power your house with it, too.

Gizmos like these aren't "water-powered". There's a battery in there. A common galvanic cell consisting of two types of metals. But this cell is incomplete, you have to fill it up yourself with an electrolyte (namely, water). Compared to the power consumption of a calculator and to the batteries that are usually used it's quite bulky, though eventually, the materials of this cell are used up, and the electrochemical reaction will cease. No matter how much water you refill, because that's not the power source.

The selling point isn't that it's is a scientific miracle (it's 200-year-old technology), or that it's something that makes more sense than a cheap, simple, lightweight solar cell that runs without the extra work of filling it up. What is sold here is simply some instant sense of achievement for the easily astonished. (no offense :) )

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Ken
11 months ago

Well I would buy it just for the novelty and geek factor. How about a water powered water filter? ;-)

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corto
11 months ago

What about instant water - add water to get some more water....?

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Yocto
11 months ago

Ooh ooh ooh, I got it. Get yourself a second calculator with a hydrogen-oxygen fuel cell (whose waste product is pure water). Link these two together.

A calculator-powered calculator! :D

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