[ScottFree]

tl;dr: Snow is positively charged and gives up electrons. Silicone is negatively charged. When falling snow contacts the surface of silicone, that produces a charge that the device captures, creating electricity.

This appears to be more useful for wearables than as a replacement for solar panels in the winter. I can't imagine the amount of power generated could be that great. It reminds me of one of those stationary bikes hooked up to a toaster.

[jerf]

"This appears to be more useful for wearables than as a replacement for solar panels in the winter."

That's a degree of bullshit so high that it has me seriously questioning what otherwise sounds at least reasonable. Yeah, I know, every science paper has to connect itself to some fashionable area of research that will excite the grant writers, like renewable energy or climate change, but the idea that it would ever be practical to capture that much power from snow is absurd. This is a particularly tenuous connection. The upper bounds on this technique are tiny; any advantage it may have is in its ability to deliver tiny amounts of power to places that would otherwise have none. If snow had any significant amount of energy in it, we'd know, because we'd get shocked when we stood in it.

I think I'm going to settle on feeling bad for the scientists that they've done such interesting work and were forced by the system to spew such heavy bullshit on top of it to keep getting funded.

[jrace]

>>If snow had any significant amount of energy in it, we'd know, because we'd get shocked when we stood in it.

But....we don't get shocked when we stand out in the sun? And yet solar power is a real thing!

I am sure people scoffed back in the 1800's when scientist first worked with solar power.

[jerf]

"But....we don't get shocked when we stand out in the sun? And yet solar power is a real thing!"

The reason I said "shocked" is not that shocking is the only way that energy can manifest itself. It's because it's the way that significant static electricity manifests, the claimed mechanism being used to obtain power.

You can tell just by standing in the sunlight that it has substantial energy, because you get warm, along with anything else in the sunlight. Therefore it has at least enough energy to do that. Not to mention power the ecosystem.

"I am sure people scoffed back in the 1800's when scientist first worked with solar power."

With all due respect, you do not appear to be in a position to be lecturing people about this sort of thing. You may not understand how energy works, but some people do.

[saalweachter]

Are there any other planets or moons in the solar system that would be better for this trick?

[jerf]

I'm not sure if you maybe meant this for some other post, but if you did mean this, there aren't that many other atmospheres in the solar system where there is A: a surface that B: any sort of machine can be on (sorry Venus) and C: has a charged massive object moving. (I don't list atmosphere explicitly but C essentially requires it; it's not going to happen in a vacuum.) We're down to Mars and Titan, basically.

Mars is an interesting question; how charged are those sand storms? It might pose the opposite problem of excessive power density!

Titan I just don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised there's some sort of charge flowing around, it's just a question of how much. Charge is pretty fundamental to mass, after all, and when things get moving it's not that hard to end up with static electricity to at least some degree.

[whatshisface]

>Silicone is negatively charged.

It's definitely not negatively charged, it just has a propensity for accumulating negative charge (like in the cloth and rod static electricity experiment).

[criddell]

Does this have the potential to be a lightning rod of any kind?