Use of the Piezoelectric Effect to Generate Electricity with a Trampoline

Overview

Objectives/Goals During a natural disaster many homes have severe power outages that can range from days to weeks. During this time people need to charge important devices such as a cell phone. The goal of this project is to create an alternative energy source that people can use to recharge small electronic devices in a natural disaster. The design criteria were that it should be compact enough to fit in a house, and generate enough electricity to charge a cell phone in an hour. It should also be easy and fun to generate electricity using this alternative energy source. Methods/Materials We looked at several alternatives for generating electricity at home. We decided on the approach of using piezoelectric disks attached to a trampoline as it met our design criteria. These piezoelectric disks generate electricity under pressure and are very convenient for generating electricity by using human body movement. The trampoline is a lot of fun to use, and using piezoelectric disks enable anyone to generate electricity simply by jumping on the trampoline. For our project, the equipment we used were: 4 piezoelectric disks 1 mini trampoline 4 pairs of 140 centimeter long wire 1 Multimeter 1 wire 9 centimeters long We attached the disks to the top of the trampoline, and connected them to a multimeter to record the voltage and current, and also connected it to a battery for storing generated electricity for use in charging a cell phone. Results Using one piezoelectric disk, the electricity generated was 32.83 micro watts, and the amount of electricity generated for four piezoelectric disks was 4,949.25 microwatts. Conclusions/Discussion Using the data on the amount of electricity that is generated, we used a regression chart to plot the amount of jumps it would take to charge an iPhone for 1 hour with 10 piezoelectric disks. The required number of jumps on the trampoline was 127 jumps, which is a reasonable number.

Awards (1)

• Honorable Mention

Competition history

• CSEF 2014 Alternative Energy (Junior Division Only) · Entry J0222

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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