When your smartphone goes dead, maybe you should cry just a little bit harder.
In fact, maybe you should cry yourself a river, because it turns out your tears — or, more specifically, a protein in your tears — can generate electricity.
The protein, lysozyme, is also found in egg whites, saliva and milk. Just apply pressure and feel the power, a team of scientists at the University of Limerick’s Bernal Institute in Ireland report in the Oct. 2 issue of the scientific journal Applied Physics Letters.
The ability to generate electricity by applying pressure — piezoelectricity — has been known and understood for years, according to a report in EurekaAlert!. The process has been applied to materials like quartz for powering the resonators and vibrators in mobile phones, deep ocean sonars and ultrasound imaging. Among the substances that possess piezoelectricity are bone, tendon and wood.
This is fantastic! We could solve the world's energy problem by harnesses the power of liberal tears. There's plenty of them now that Trump is in office and they are probably packed with lysozyme just waiting for the hard working conservatives to harness.
Ok all joking aside, this is definitely and interesting science and I'm sure there's plenty of technologies that could use something like this if it were a practical alternative like generating electricity when you run and your feet apply pressure to a material that's in your shoes and it generates electricity to power you cell phone or something. Also, maybe you could fill up your tires with this liquid and generate electricity while driving your bike or car around town. I think those would be really cool applications if science could pull it off and make it practical and cost effective.
Source: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2017/10/03/scientists-produce-electricity-from-tears.html