Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Iam with a project in which simple machine like wheel and axle,pulleys and levers are used to develop home appliances.The theme behind this is that the energy which is spend during an exercise can be utilised for the working of certain home appliances like siever,washing pot,and grinding pot.A bicycle wheel is connected to series of pulleys and wheels which multiply the force.Here i would like to connect a 12 volt motor so that by its rotation electicity is generated.I am really stuck here for i don't know what to be done to store this energy so that it can be used latter and also how to charge mobiles from this.(Iwanted to generate electricity from the movement of these wheels and the same energy need to be stored)

Any suggestions .Please help

thank you

Hi jiju,

Welcome to the forum. This sounds like a very interesting and practical project!

I've definitely heard of devices and batteries than can be recharged by winding something by hand -- the search term here seems to be "hand crank", and it probably wouldn't be to hard to hook a bicycle up to something like that. See if these (focused on battery charging, which might be easier than motor charging) give you some ideas:

http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/236
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/511
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/967302/cr ... batteries/
http://www.zetatalk.com/energy/tengy05n.htm

Feel free to come back to this thread with more thoughts and questions.

Amanda

Thank you for the reply and the help given.

Jiju,
Thanks for your interest in our Science Buddies forums. You might have missed the introductory forums that explain the purpose and guidelines of this forum, which is specifically dedicated to helping students with their high school science fair projects. Please have a look:
http://www.sciencebuddies.com/science-f ... ntro.shtml
We do receive questions about non-science fair related projects, and our experts do sometimes assist with these off-topic questions. Because of the educational focus of these forums, we generally do not provide detailed designs for devices or experiments beyond pointing people towards existing resources, as Amanda has done by providing several web links. If you would introduce yourself, your educational/ professional background, and the venue of your project (e.g. high school science fair, commercial enterprise, masters thesis, etc), we may be able to help further.

Regards,
Chris

Hi,

You have quite a wide choice of methods of storing energy as indicated in the following websites:

http://www.mpoweruk.com/alternatives.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_storage

http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_ ... er=1518837

For practical portable systems I would suggest looking into flywheels, super capacitors, and batteries. Compressed air is another possibility.

This is a great topic to show your creativity and imagination.

Best wishes,

Barrett Tomlinson

dear barrett tomlinson,
Thank you for the reply