Product Description and Elements of Design
Our prototype is a heat generated flashlight, using body heat from the user as the main source of energy and the chemicals within as a back-up source. We realized that flashlights are generally powered by batteries, which are harmful to our environment. By creating a flashlight using heat to create light, it will be more environmentally friendly compared to the competing flashlights on the market. We noticed that there will be certain scenarios, where the body heat of the user might be too cold to provide enough energy to generate light, so we will have certain chemicals inside to help maintain a light source. Our product will be made out of a conductive material to allow heat conduction to generate energy, thus creating light. However, we noticed that there are situations where the user may want to hold the flashlight, but not necessarily want light, so we decided to create an on and off button that controls the flow of energy. Overall, we are aiming to create a flashlight that will mainly use the thermal energy from our bodies instead of batteries to build a durable product with the goal of reducing the potential waste of ordinary flashlights that are going into landfills after disposal and to indirectly eliminate the usage of batteries.
Background Research and Significance
Our bodies emit huge amounts of heat everyday that can be used as energy as well. The average person at any given moment can produce the same amount of energy equivalent to a 100 watt light bulb. This heat energy can be transferred to our flashlight, through conduction, which is a transfer of heat between objects that are in direct contact with each other. Ultimately, the flashlight will obtain electricity and power through thermopower, which is the ability to generate electricity from heat. There is a significance in making such a product as it is another step in becoming more environmentally friendly. Body head replaces the batteries that were once used. Furthermore, batteries tend to die easily, so a flashlight without batteries would be an easy solution.
Links to Curriculum
There are three sciences present in our product, which are physics, chemistry and computer science. We will need to use parts of a circuit, which branches from physics, to allow the electricity to be transported. For chemistry, our knowledge of stoichiometry will help us generate an ideal reaction between chemicals in order to have a source of light. Both sciences will help us with the topic of thermodynamics to explain how heat will help generate power. We will use computer science to create a website and a visual stimulator of our product as we are unable to physically make it. These topics all appear in the Ontario high school curriculum.
