Thought Lateral » night http://thoughtlateral.com Looking at the world laterally, but that's beside the point ;-) Wed, 09 May 2012 12:33:10 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 #20 How to make life light up with a dead battery http://thoughtlateral.com/2010/08/07/20-how-to-make-life-light-up-with-a-dead-battery/ http://thoughtlateral.com/2010/08/07/20-how-to-make-life-light-up-with-a-dead-battery/#comments Sat, 07 Aug 2010 18:15:59 +0000 Denver http://thoughtlateral.com/?p=289 Normally when a cell battery can no longer power our devices we dispose of them. If waste management systems are in place they may go for recycling. However, even though they are ‘dead’ they can still provide a useful function.

What? How can a dead battery power something?

A ‘dead’ battery can be hooked up to a Light Emitting Diode (LED) through a simple circuit to provide many hours of useful light. Such a light is very useful for a night light, and can run for days (yes, for days!) from an apparently ‘dead’ battery.

This device is commonly called a Joule Thief, as it extracts the last remaining joules of energy from the ‘dead’ battery. The following vid from Makezine shows how it’s done.

Make a Joule Thief

I’ve created a variation that houses the whole circuit inside tiny torch bulb. A normal filament torch bulb is removed from the screw in base, and replaced with an LED and circuit to make a Joule Thief. The beauty is that it can be used as a bulb replacement for standard torches. The result? Much better light efficiency, and far longer run times.

Help save the planet’s resources use a Joule Thief!

]]> http://thoughtlateral.com/2010/08/07/20-how-to-make-life-light-up-with-a-dead-battery/feed/ 0 #11 Get up on the sound of the alarm http://thoughtlateral.com/2009/12/30/get-up-on-the-sound-of-the-alarm/ http://thoughtlateral.com/2009/12/30/get-up-on-the-sound-of-the-alarm/#comments Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:32:10 +0000 Denver http://thoughtlateral.com/2009/12/30/get-up-on-the-sound-of-the-alarm/ What is the difference between the alarm going off in the morning and getting out of bed? For me it is the snooze time in between.
When the alarm goes off I’m still semi-concious and hit the snooze button for extra repose. So the time set on the alarm to get up is not the actual time I arise.
How do I get up at the set time? I could set the alarm earlier, so that after snoozing I’d be up at the time planned. However this is interpreted by a freshly awoken brain as “useful time when I should actually still be asleep”, and consequently it feels it is owed extra slumber than the snooze button will give.
The optimal solution is to arise on the sound of the alarm, yet my freshly woken mind is convinced that the one hour for morning tasks (allocated before I went to bed) can be accomplished in just half, which leaves the other half hour for snooze time.
Coersion, threats, etc, have limited impact upon the awoken mind. The most significant impact I’ve found is to bed down earlier the night before, which significantly increases my chances of getting up on the alarm. So changing me over time from a night owl to an early bird.

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