Soccer Ball That Doubles as a Reusable Energy Source

Published on: 9th February, 2010 @ 12:57 am by JeffG

I’ve never been a great proponent of the “beautiful game” of soccer, because I find it , well, boring.  Make that excruciatingly boring.  Probably because I’ve never played the game, I have never really grasped the intricacies that make the “beautiful game” so special.  Soccer hooligans are cool in a terrifying way, but that’s about it.

Even I have to admit that I became intrigued after reading about the sOccket–a soccer ball that doubles as a reusable energy source.  It looks like an ordinary soccer ball, only thing is that while it’s being played with, it is storing the energy that is normally lost through normal play.

I kid you not.

The sOccket was invented by four ladies from Harvard, who were trying to come up with a way for developing (ie. poor) countries to lower their dependence on kerosene lamps for light, since the fumes given off from burning kerosene are big CO2 producers.

Their idea–placing an “inductive coil mechanism” inside the ball that stores the kinetic energy that is formed when the ball is kicked around, inside a battery.  The stored energy can then be used later to power an LED lamp.

Soccer during the day…leads to clean, well lit homes at night.

Cool, no?

The Harvard group plans to market the sOccket to the Western market as a tech gadget to charge cell phones, iPods and such.  If successful, the ladies plan to use the profits to distribute the balls to poorer countries at a much reduced cost.  While not ready quite yet, the group hopes to have a completed version of the sOccket ready by the end of this year.

For more info, head to the sOccket website.

[H/T The Offside]

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