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August 15, 2005

Pee-powered battery smaller than a credit card

It's about time, because my old suitcase sized pee-powered battery was such a pain to lug around and fill. Plus I lost the lid so it was prone to spilling. Physicists in Singapore have developed a credit card sized power source able to deliver 1.5uW at 1.5V using .2ml of fresh urine as a catalyst. If only Howard Hughes could have known it was power he was collecting in jars, not just fetid urine. It is meant for one-off disposable items (home medical testing kits are one application) to deliver low power for several hours, so we're not yet to the point of peeing directly into the laptop (solving two problems at once for marathon coders/gamers). Get ready for the custom case badges "Powered By [Mountain Dew/Coffee/Budweiser/Unicorn Blood]".