Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hello. I am doing a school Science Fair project for which I need a Piezoelectric generator of sorts. My project involves rolling a makeshift car over a sensor or generator to determine the amount of electricity that is or could be produced. My project has two parts. In the the first I will try to determine how much energy can be generated by rolling cars of different mass and velocity(separately). In the second I will use proportions to relate my experiment to if piezoelectric generators were placed for one meter on an average highway.



I need help finding a 10 by 10(cm) Piezoelectric ceramic or plate or generator preferably soon.(something I can use for generating electricity from mechanical pressure) When I looked around it seemed that something that looked like this http://www.ultra-piezo.com/uploadfile/2 ... 952190.jpg could be ran over by my makeshift model car and using copper wire and a multi-meter I could measure the output. Finding the pizio is more important then the battery. And most sites that sell piezoelectric seem for businesses. Do you know where I could get a plate that exhibits piezoelectric properties well?.

This is a new project I invented for the purpose of my science fair and if it works out I intend to post it on science buddies project list.

Hi Aayaan-

I did a Google search for "piezo harvesting demo kit" and found a bunch of things. This one (http://www.piceramic.com/info/news/news ... o-kit.html) if it's still available may be the closest thing to a sensor and the required electronics of the bunch. Many of them are eval kits for chipsets that can harvest power and you need to connect them to microprocessors and write test code.

I'm not sure what you mean by "post it on science buddies project list" but you could certainly email us and maybe there's a way of working with you to add it to the site. In the meantime, harvest some power and let us know how it works out!

Howard