Plastic Solar Cells Let Your Shirt Charge Your Phone

And they’re supposed to work better than current cells.

:cool:

How the heck do you clean it?

Actually, it’s been done.

Obviously, you’d wash them in a sunshower! :wink:

On the one hand, it is cool to not have to worry about powering your various devices as long as there’s sunshine.

On the other, how stupid are you going to look with a bunch of cords plugged into your shirt?

You use an inside pocket for the gizmos. Cord don’t show.

The real exciting part, of course, is if this stuff is “five times more efficient” at converting the sun’s rays to electricity than current solar cells, then perhaps solar power plants could be feasible. And what about cars? I can hardly wait until the next “solar powered car” competition!

You know, you could combine this shirt with a mini-Mac, a headset monitor, a mini trackball, and this keyboard,and you’d be an uberdork! (Or proto-Borg, depending upon your view. :wink: )

You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for some of these idiots to come up with that idea. Biggest power drain in a modern laptop? The display. So you take that away, add in the gadgets that you listed, and you have a small compact box that you can leave under your seat while you use the interfaces to do your work. Add in some blue tooth communications to get rid of a few wires, and then you have something worth marketing. sigh…alas, I’m not in the R&D department for HP or anything.

Damn.