I love new technology and I just heard about this recently. It's not available to the general public yet, but it's a good possibility that you'll see this (or something similar) in the future.

 

This is a project called Heat Harvest. The Copenhagen Institute of Interactive Design gave 12 people a couple of weeks to come up with some ideas on how to save energy and promote a healthier lifestyle. Two of the participants, Sergey Komardenkov and Vihanga Gore (both of whom are much smarter than I am) came up with this idea.

You know when you have a cup of coffee sitting on the table, and you're chatting or watching the news or checking Facebook or something - what happens to the coffee? Over time, it loses its warmth and will eventually get to room temperature. Hopefully you will have finished drinking it before it gets cold.

The point is this: in terms of physics, heat = energy. So the heat that is lost from your coffee into the air in the room is really just energy that is lost and wasted. So these two people thought, "How can we put this energy into use, instead of wasting it?".

So they came up with a process that converts the heat from an object (whether it's your cup of coffee or any other hot dish sitting on the table) into electricity. That electricity is released at a certain point on the same table using a concept called thermal electricity. It's been around for hundreds of years, but some recent developments have made it possible to be more efficient to actually harvest wasted heat and use it to power up or charge the objects that we use every day.

One of the sponsors for this project is Ikea - you've probably heard of them. We have an Ikea store here in the Tampa Bay area, and they do have some pretty cool furniture and household items. There have been times when I wish it came preassembled, but I guess that's part of the fun. So I guess the most likely place to first see the Heat Harvest in action could be in an Ikea dining room table. Pretty smart!

Here's a video that explains more about it:

https://youtu.be/JZ3B68rxkf4