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Breakthrough Technology

Amazing insights into innovative creations


One of the fundamental problems with the progress of technological innovation is that we incur an ever-increasing dependence on energy. Recently, I spent an evening at the movies with the lovely Mrs. F00bar and another couple -- an independent computer consultant and an IT manager for a cellular phone company. Between the two of them, they had at least five personal gadgets, including cell phones, pagers, a Palm Pilot, and some sort of digital organizer gizmo with an acoustic coupler on the back. And I thought to myself ... "the batteries they must go through!"

But that's all about to change. An independent group of scientists from Delaware (there's nothing to do in Delaware, so they spent all their time hanging out in the science lab, I guess) recently patented a technique which harnesses approximately 32,000 kilowatthours from an ordinary 12-ounce can of Pepsi. Sustained load can be up to 3 kilowatts (enough to power your typical cell phone or clothes dryer) and there are no "memory" effects which can plague other portable energy sources such as nickel-cadmium batteries.

The energy, beverage, and technology industries immediately sprung to action, of course. Coca-Cola launched a development effort to come up with a similar technology using their own cola brand, but they were unable to achieve the cola energy effect (which is fine, because Coke is better if you drink it; let the Pepsi be used for energy supply). The big oil companies made efforts to have cola power outlawed in the United States in order to protect their interests. Microsoft Corporation unsuccessfully tried to cut an exclusive deal with Pepsico to have their Internet Explorer web browser running on every soda can.

So far, the scientists who invented cola power technology have not sold the manufacturing rights to Pepsico or any other beverage company. The lead engineer, Luke Warmfizz, had this to say at a recent press conference: "Hey, this stuff is really cool. We're just gonna use it to power our Playstation until we can figure out something else to do with it, ok?" Until then, the rest of us will have to continue to make do with our trusty old "Mr. Fusion" boxes.





Posted by IGnatius T Foobar <> on Thu Aug 05 1999 00:13:00 EDT
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