Building a Magnetic Pendulum That Generates Electricity As It Swings Over Copper

Engineer Tom Stanton explored whether the energy captured by a magnetic pendulum swinging over a block of copper could be used as a battery. As he explained, copper is not magnetic, but the motion generates heat that can be converted into electricity.

Here I have a magnet suspended from some string which allows it to swing like a pendulum ….the magnet induces electric currents in the copper and those currents generate their own magnetic field that fights back and slow it down and the magnet’s kinetic energy is converted into heat inside of the copper. But what if instead of wasting that energy as heat, could we capture it to power something?

Stanton built a prototype that he progressively scaled using a number of engineering techniques to power a variety of devices.

Right now, we should scale up this thing and see what else we can power.

via The Awesomer