I have tried to connect many in series with drawing a line, using staples, and different number pencils. It seems to not increase like a battery does. Maybe stapling diodes between each cell...
I would like to start off by saying how much of an inspiration you were for me to get back into doing things again. Thank you! This was so plain simple I did it right away! I used an HB#2 and an H8 pencil. Now what was interesting is when I went from drawing it on paper to directly on a quartz crystal. The increase in power out was tremendous. I went from getting 20-30 uV to 0.182 V with a similar size circuit!!!! I repeated the process multiple times with similar results. I'm not sure why this is, but seemed very interesting to me and thought you would like to hear about my results. Maybe you can give it a go and see if you have similar results. Some interesting finds I had: - I found that the size of the crystal didn't seem to matter. - At 300°C it no longer produced a voltage -Freezing prior to applying heat seemed to be more of a detriment -Applying heat to the Cathode produced more voltage Thanks for all of your videos! Please keep them coming! And the same with Luke!
@Time Surfer I haven't tried glass yet, but I could see it being beneficial with having the cathode on one side of the glass and the anode on the other. Then, encapsulate the cathode side to trap the heat, add a reflector to the back to increase the thermal efficiency. This may increase the voltage based on my findings of adding heat to the to cathode increases the voltage. What are your thoughts on this? How do you think the glass should improve? Why?
I love your enthusiasm and positivity. We need more of this in the world. A positive outlook, a taste for discovery and a creative and problem-solving attitude! Thank you for inspiring forward momentum! 🔥❤️🔥
At the rate you make incredible videos; in 2 years I'm gonna see the TNT logo and 3 minutes later you're going to be showing me a sustainable fusion reactor built with pencil graphite and super glue.
This idea maybe used in conjunction with a solar hot water system by using the heat sink of the solar panel painted with this graphite and getting twice the bang for the buck so to speak. Great content mate 👍
can't wait to see you scale this up. maybe use it inside a car on a sunny day. wonder if you could chuck the pencil into one of those 3d routers and program all the marks for one type of pencil then the other for a faster large array print
Brother! You have a Prayer for Jesus that was Forgotten from the Whole Roman Catholic Order as Profile Image! And you generate Power from Graphite Drowings!! How Much you are made of Truth‽ [Regardless of Faith and Truth: Can you Imagine this drown on a Stirling Engine made of Graphite? Because I have No Single Idea How they work..but still it would be a great way to augment Stirling's Efficiency..even if slightly..]
@@antoniopacelli I don't know much about Roman Catholics. I'm Eastern Orthodox, and this prayer is the core of our faith, every Orthodox Christian knows it. Talking about the thermocouple, putting it on a Stirling engine seems to be a little bit complex project which eliminates the genuineness and simplicity of graphite on paper. I would think that the really interesting idea would be making a layered solar panel, like roof shingles, using plastic instead of paper, where the next layer shields the "cold" side of the thermocouple on the previous layer.
@@Aleksandr-Herman What about applying it over Insulation material for Recycling the output heat of Industrial Sector? An insulating Aerogel with Layers of Thermocouple drown over a conductive heat resistant material.. Even Copper could be good if the Heat isn't too High. Do you know if this Thermocouple can be made of Graphene? Because I know from Kaner DoD/UCLA projects that you can convert Graphite Oxide into Graphene by burning out Oxigen with Laser Beam..even the one of a DVD burner... Little practical Examples: You could Burn Graphite Oxide Drowning of Multiple Thermocouple over a Copper "CD" place it all over you Hybrid Car Motor and connecting it to the Battery.. Yeah i know i am overcomplicating things it happens if i had little Sleep.
I literally just had the idea of using pencil lead on a sheet of paper as a very simpel (and inefficient) photovoltaic cell and darnit, looks like I wasn't the first. Very cool to see my hypothesis is an actual field of research since recently!
I do love the excitement. I have always been interested in the idea of thermopiles being used to somehow assist a solar cell. I would love to see the next iteration of this! Since you guys have the 6B Pencil and 2HB Pencil, you could draw a few hundred junctions where the light from the many small lenses of the microlens array light lands... and then retest under the sun to see how much of a boost you get vs fresnel. Please include "current" in experiments too so we can see power output.
Very Clever what a little english ingenuity can do !. & yes Rob, we can see how dangerously hot it is in merry olde England that day, having to wear a jacket & all. i'd bet if you made a hundred or 2 of the right materials & heated them in an oil bath heated by a solar trough you could get a very usefull bit of power. i think i'll try it when we get back to summer in texas
Very nice. I can see another method that could be used to manufacture this. Remember the laser sintering of kapton tape? You could sinter one carbon junction on the kapton and sinter a different carbon on a different plastic that gives you the carbon type that you need. Stick them together and volia!
Looks like they make 6B and HB mechanical pencil leads. Laid side-by-side, alternating HB - 6B, someone could build a considerable sized array pretty cheaply. Perhaps embedded in clear plastic film, on a substrate, it might make a worthwhile cell.
@@MerwinARTist I think the trick is to only heat one side of the junction and to transport heat away from the other side of the junction. It is pretty cool but I can't imagine how big of a device you'd have to make to match a single small peltier element in performance.
@@professorfukyu744 I recently got four cells for experiments. I think I paid around $20 for them so I would not consider them prohibitively expensive for experiments. But if you want to use them for meaningful power generation they are expensive but I still think they are cheaper than the pencil method =)
@@miklov In the first video he put his finger over the spot where the junction between the two graphite connections met. There was voltage between to the two graphite pencil lines. Next he put a thin piece of plastic over the junction and again touched the same spot. The reason this was important is to show there was no moisture on his finger that was connecting the two .. or from his finger. This now tells me it was the warmth or heat that caused the voltage between the two graphite lines. This is demonstrated with using the lens in this video .. no finger .. just solar heat. Tesla said that if you knew the value of frequency / vibration .. you could understand the universe. Everything is "Energy" even X-rays which cannot be seen with the naked eye .. but colors also radiate at a specific frequency .. that our eyes pick up. This is why I am wondering if the contrast between opposing colors might also be a generator. Like what happens when you look at Red next to Green .. it is used in Art as a way to grab the attention of the eye. In nature we have a Green plant growing up .. and then there might be a Red flower .. so the Green part is supporting the flower with focused "Energy". This is quite interesting .. my theory might not be valid I don't know .. but to me it's an incredible thought. Color Frequency - Photon Energy Violet 668-789 THz PE 2.75-3.26 eV Blue 606-668 THz PE 2.50-2.75 eV Green 526-606 THz PE 2.17-2.50 eV Yellow 508-526 THz PE 2.10-2.17 eV Orange 484-508 THz PE 2.00-2.10 eV Red 400-484 THz PE 1.65-2.00 eV
I was thinking you could 3d print a relief design and then do a rubbing onto paper with the pencils. I think that could be a fairly quick way to pattern the design onto the paper manually.
Might require the HB lead or both to be turned into a fine dust as I just tried it on plastic In the art world Pencil drawings are fixed with hair spray
@@seamuscharles9028 You've set me off now lol. Wouldn't the hair spray create a an electrical barrier? What plastic did you use and was there a good trace of different types of pencil ( graphite ) on the plastic, also what heat source were you using? Did you sandwich the plastic? and if so did you direct the heat vertically or horizontally through the plastic? Sorry for all the questions but I don't have the equipment to measure any results I may draw/etch on the plastic.
@@chrissavill8713 sadly I don't have the equipment either The 8b pencil has no problem on plastic but the harder HB has I was also thinking that a mirror could be used to reflect the Light back up through the stack
Pretty neat. And maybe something can be done to improve the output. My imediate thoughts go to it would take roughly 2,000 junctions in serries to get 1 volt. Or 20,000 for 10v. What's the internal resistance? Pencil lead isn't a great conductor so I'm guessing a 20,000 series junction will have a high internal resistance which might work for very small loads but the voltage will drop as one increases the load drawn. When you mathematically model a voltage source with its internal resistance and an external load resistance, you'll find maximum power is transferred to the load when the load resistance = source resistance. Another example of Impedence matching and power transfer.
Hi, Keith. I think you are mistaking millivolts with microvolts. At 0.500 mV, it would just take 2 junctions to make 1 volt. Imagine 10 junctions thick enough to handle the current, and you could charge a cell phone.
@@rclewis01 Your voltmeter was showing 0.500mV, so half a millivolt (0.0005V), not half a volt, which should show up as either 0.5 V or 500 mV, so, to get 1V you would need 2000 junctions.
Hahaha, I agree. I whipped up a design on the cricut and set it to work to make hundreds of these junctions! There was one flaw I ran into... the pencil dulling. So back to the drawing board I went (pun intended) 😅
Even though light from sun doesn't heat, i think infrared light heats. Then in theory one could implement such thermal couple array into a transparent sheet or glass panel and stack vertically. Graphite is also black so it heats under sun more
I wonder if good old-fashioned carbon paper would work and if it comes in HB and 6B. It would save a lot if colouring in. Or could we grind up the graphite from the pencils (or buy it somewhere), put it into an emulsion of some sort, and then paint it on in interesting shapes.
I wonder if the power would increase if two touching parallel lines were drawn on the paper instead of two lines joining at the tip. (Really enjoy your videos)
I used a grid, graphene in one direction and graphite(2b drawing pencil) in another. Brought them all together in rails on the sides. So I think you are on the right track there. Keep it up!
When I was a kid I thought I was some pretty hot sh*t when I worked out I could use pencil lines on paper as very basic resistors. I went as far as scrounging components from the technology teacher at school to build a basic oscillator circuit with a piezo speaker (Copied from a book I found in the school library), and tried to make a paper "Stylophone" by drawing lines with roughly the right resistance, and trying to tune it by adding thicker lines, or rubbing at them a little to change their resistance. It proved to be absolutely bloody impossible get all the notes even close, and some notes would change entirely just from picking up the paper to move it (My guess was that when the paper flexed it shifted the way all the flecks of graphite made contact, and altered the resistance) but it's an interesting and fun childhood memory none the less. In the end I worked out that I could alter the volume by running another part of the circuit onto a pencil line too, and sliding a paperclip twisted on a length of wire along a pencil line would work as a variable resistor (It might have been the 9v battery power I was varying). So I used two pencil lines and two paperclips to have pitch and volume controls, and created a kind of temperamental variation on the Theremin........ and some pretty horendous sounds. :D I thought what I was doing was pretty creative back then, but if I knew that one day I'd be seeing someone "Draw" a working thermocouple, it would have frazzled my little pre teen mind. :D
That brings more ideas .. what if they were printed on a clear plastic or glass and sandwich layered. The heat would be transferred into the depth of the system .. reducing the outside surface area while increasing the output. ??? I'm also wondering if there could be a difference in graphite by using color differences .. which color is understood to be a frequency difference .. so red and black may be similar .. but contrasting colors like Red vs Green - Blue vs Orange - Yellow vs Purple.
I place this into the same category of awesomeness as the rain-droplet triboelectric generator with which I had some surprisingly good results. I am gonna be onboard a narrowboat for a few weeks, but I can't wait to play with this.
My thoughts for others to consider... 1. Where is the potential difference? 2. Is it the potential difference in carbon of the 2 pencils leads 3. Is is the potential difference between the absorption of photons between the 2 carbon black. 4. Does the heat difference also come into play? Seems like it 5. I'd like to print Vantablack and regular ink and see the difference power 6. Is amperage based on the thickness of the line?
Could you try half a page each HB with a connection in the middle and then laminate the page. to see how much more power could be generated. I wish I was more technically minded as I would do it myself.
😀 if you could print 1 side of the thermocouple on 1 side of a page and the other half of the thermocouple on the opposite side of the page so that they meet at a point, using conductive ink. You could play with different shapes, to get better air flow for the cold side.
Humm...the difference between hot 🔥 and ❄️ works best. AND well how to increase cold side? Principle of evaporation, been used for thousands of years. Soooo..put two systems together! 💡 Evaporate water in one dish or container to cool water or make ice, and pump that water (or cooled air in the presence of ice) to the cold side thus increasing it's efficiency by magnitudes. I've done some experiments with this and it works well. Give it a go! GL!
Measure it in Watts to get an accurate difference between the difference in temp. I doubt Rob you will need more on how to build the evaporative cooler as it's easy and you probably already made one. 😂
Rob You're Awesome with that eureka laughter.😂👍 hope next experiment will be using your jet stove as a source of heat or that multi fuel stove, thank you Sir.
Love this channel...this episode got me to here - polycrystalline tin selenide of n and p type in a matrix using solar energy - now my maniacal laughter. 😜
You got me thinking about thermocouples, Peltier effect, Seebeck effect and IR detectors like FLIR...well it beats thinking about the sad state of affairs - thanks for taking my mind off the crummy news :-) Use a telescope or even binoculars with the thermocouples to develop a crude IR detector/matrix camera
Do the length of the lines matter? ie longer lines would give more amps? What about the intersecting points? Do they simply meet? Or do they overlap? Is more contact between the 2 types of pencil better or worse for output? Very iteresting concept!!!
Later in the paper they talk about making two lines of 6b and connecting them with hb to create a peltier like device I wonder if you made a bunch of lines of B and then two lines at the top and bottom of 6b if you'd get a small peltier device
Theoretically, if you drew several connecting lines, alternating pencils every other line... three lines giving you two thermocouples, theoretically; three lines giving you two thermocouples in series, that would double your voltage output with just three lines.
One side, graphite paper. Other side, clear tape with charcoal or activated carbon "graphene" layer stuck to it. Simiar construction can be used for capacitors.
In all this crazy last couple of videos I missed the exact mechanism that creates the voltage across the graphite junction. You have the line of one graphite and a mine of another with a common over lap section. Infra red photons are dislodging electrons at the boundary layer so are we saying one graphite has a different crystalline structure causing this preference or is it the non graphite components causing the exchange ?
Id figure its the amount of graphite. It probably doesnt matter what pencils or carbon you use so long as theyre different. Experiments can be run to figure out which pair has the most difference for maximum output.
Someone else was first, but if you're going to print the ink onto paper regardless, instead of/in addition to lenses print the circuits on black paper, the white paper isn't collecting as much heat, though the marking itself is, (not sure how important cooling is here) alternatively if cooling a different portion of the paper is helpful, dyes such as YInMn blue that are supposed to be capable of sub ambient cooling by radiation could be printed just as easily. Additionally, what is to stop you from printing out a "book" worth of "sheets", separating them by an electrical insulator (blank paper?), binding them with a wiring "spine", and making a huge, cheap, thermopile?
so the simple desktop option is for luke to draw up the simple 10/50 track pcb with matching 'solder mask' from pcbway for a few £ that puts super/caps diodes & many double sided pads in this layout to use as your repeatable carbon mask
Would it not work better if you drew (or printed) adjoining lines? OK ... I'm scrapping my idea of re-purposing existing solar panels ... Now I think they should come with this already fitted to the back!
A couple hundred dots on paper?! Hmmm...sounds like a good punishment for naughty children AND you get your solar cell. IF they misbehave regularly you could get a WHOLE solar panel!
I tried to reproduce your experiment and come to the conclusion that the paper and humidity must be quite important. Taking off the pencils graphite from paper by using an adhesiv strip and attaching my multimeter clamps to this strip nothing happens any more :-( . On the other hand raising the humidity of the paper used before the microvolts increases immediately, vice versa when drying out the "junction" spot with a small not air heater the voltage goes to zero. I was not able to reproduce something sing a fresnel or other lense. Maybe you can investigate this experiment more. looove your channel :-) cincerely yours.
perhaps I should read the paper to understand the process better, but couldn't you bind two thicknesses of charcoal to achieve the same effect and presumably generate more power? [edit: or graphite rods cut with a 45° angle? ]
That laugh 🤣🤣
I was hoping you were going to scale this up to see how much an A4 piece of paper could produce.
.
Half as much as an A3.
You do it. Get a lens and have some fun! Part of the point of his channel!
I have tried to connect many in series with drawing a line, using staples, and different number pencils. It seems to not increase like a battery does. Maybe stapling diodes between each cell...
@@makerslife just draw a zig zag line. One pencil for the zig and the other pencil for the zag. Connect terminals to both ends.
@1:54 - Evil scientist laughter if I've ever heard it!
What a fun video, and dangerously informative.
That laugh of delight is very endearing ☺️
I would like to start off by saying how much of an inspiration you were for me to get back into doing things again. Thank you! This was so plain simple I did it right away! I used an HB#2 and an H8 pencil. Now what was interesting is when I went from drawing it on paper to directly on a quartz crystal. The increase in power out was tremendous. I went from getting 20-30 uV to 0.182 V with a similar size circuit!!!! I repeated the process multiple times with similar results. I'm not sure why this is, but seemed very interesting to me and thought you would like to hear about my results. Maybe you can give it a go and see if you have similar results.
Some interesting finds I had:
- I found that the size of the crystal didn't seem to matter.
- At 300°C it no longer produced a voltage
-Freezing prior to applying heat seemed to be more of a detriment
-Applying heat to the Cathode produced more voltage
Thanks for all of your videos! Please keep them coming! And the same with Luke!
Staples also work really nicely to connect the cells
I wonder how glass would work as a substrate.
@Time Surfer I haven't tried glass yet, but I could see it being beneficial with having the cathode on one side of the glass and the anode on the other. Then, encapsulate the cathode side to trap the heat, add a reflector to the back to increase the thermal efficiency. This may increase the voltage based on my findings of adding heat to the to cathode increases the voltage. What are your thoughts on this? How do you think the glass should improve? Why?
not even the pencil! just tiny bits of graphite! this is outstanding, sir. mad respect to your whole vibe.
Why are you mad?
I'd like to see you do this and come up with a practical DIY solar cell producing about 10W.
I love your enthusiasm and positivity. We need more of this in the world. A positive outlook, a taste for discovery and a creative and problem-solving attitude! Thank you for inspiring forward momentum! 🔥❤️🔥
At the rate you make incredible videos; in 2 years I'm gonna see the TNT logo and 3 minutes later you're going to be showing me a sustainable fusion reactor built with pencil graphite and super glue.
This idea maybe used in conjunction with a solar hot water system by using the heat sink of the solar panel painted with this graphite and getting twice the bang for the buck so to speak.
Great content mate 👍
Brilliant! MacGuyver does it again. I was waiting to see a paperclip and postage stamp :)
I love these shows.
If there were ever a breakthrough with time travel, I'd expect it to be yours ha.
I really like your enthusiasm. Keep it up.
That is awesome thanks Rob.
Im glad you never stop contemplating over initial concepts
can't wait to see you scale this up. maybe use it inside a car on a sunny day. wonder if you could chuck the pencil into one of those 3d routers and program all the marks for one type of pencil then the other for a faster large array print
It’s just getting more amazing.
It's such a simple thing, and yet I find it totally engrossing!
Yet another top notch video.
Thank you Robert, I feel honored!
After seen you struggling with my name I decided I need to change my name on RUclips to a simpler version of it 😄
Brother!
You have a Prayer for Jesus that was Forgotten from the Whole Roman Catholic Order as Profile Image!
And you generate Power from Graphite Drowings!!
How Much you are made of Truth‽
[Regardless of Faith and Truth:
Can you Imagine this drown on a Stirling Engine made of Graphite?
Because I have No Single Idea How they work..but still it would be a great way to augment Stirling's Efficiency..even if slightly..]
@@antoniopacelli
I don't know much about Roman Catholics. I'm Eastern Orthodox, and this prayer is the core of our faith, every Orthodox Christian knows it.
Talking about the thermocouple, putting it on a Stirling engine seems to be a little bit complex project which eliminates the genuineness and simplicity of graphite on paper.
I would think that the really interesting idea would be making a layered solar panel, like roof shingles, using plastic instead of paper, where the next layer shields the "cold" side of the thermocouple on the previous layer.
@@Aleksandr-Herman
What about applying it over Insulation material for Recycling the output heat of Industrial Sector?
An insulating Aerogel with Layers of Thermocouple drown over a conductive heat resistant material..
Even Copper could be good if the Heat isn't too High.
Do you know if this Thermocouple can be made of Graphene?
Because I know from Kaner DoD/UCLA projects that you can convert Graphite Oxide into Graphene by burning out Oxigen with Laser Beam..even the one of a DVD burner...
Little practical Examples:
You could Burn Graphite Oxide Drowning of Multiple Thermocouple over a Copper "CD" place it all over you Hybrid Car Motor and connecting it to the Battery..
Yeah i know i am overcomplicating things it happens if i had little Sleep.
As always I learn something new from you guys.
Fantastic! It would have interesting to see the short-circuit current
i love watching these things.. ty again
I literally just had the idea of using pencil lead on a sheet of paper as a very simpel (and inefficient) photovoltaic cell and darnit, looks like I wasn't the first.
Very cool to see my hypothesis is an actual field of research since recently!
this sounds like a really great experiment to do with the kids
I do love the excitement. I have always been interested in the idea of thermopiles being used to somehow assist a solar cell. I would love to see the next iteration of this!
Since you guys have the 6B Pencil and 2HB Pencil, you could draw a few hundred junctions where the light from the many small lenses of the microlens array light lands... and then retest under the sun to see how much of a boost you get vs fresnel. Please include "current" in experiments too so we can see power output.
how awesome is that. Have a wonderful day!
this man is a genius
This is amazing, everything you’ve made has got to be saved, you’re an inspiration!!
Had anyone else done this I would have presumed some jiggery-pokery was afoot but you sir are amazing and totally credible
Plain awesome 👏🎉
Awesome! Now you need to draw up a full page!
Very Clever what a little english ingenuity can do !. & yes Rob, we can see how dangerously hot it is in merry olde England that day, having to wear a jacket & all. i'd bet if you made a hundred or 2 of the right materials & heated them in an oil bath heated by a solar trough you could get a very usefull bit of power. i think i'll try it when we get back to summer in texas
Very nice. I can see another method that could be used to manufacture this. Remember the laser sintering of kapton tape? You could sinter one carbon junction on the kapton and sinter a different carbon on a different plastic that gives you the carbon type that you need. Stick them together and volia!
Looks like they make 6B and HB mechanical pencil leads. Laid side-by-side, alternating HB - 6B, someone could build a considerable sized array pretty cheaply. Perhaps embedded in clear plastic film, on a substrate, it might make a worthwhile cell.
Yes .. I'm wondering if it could be layered (sandwiched) so the surface area could be reduced for a greater output.
@@MerwinARTist I think the trick is to only heat one side of the junction and to transport heat away from the other side of the junction. It is pretty cool but I can't imagine how big of a device you'd have to make to match a single small peltier element in performance.
Have you priced peltiers? Theyre very expensive for experiments.
@@professorfukyu744 I recently got four cells for experiments. I think I paid around $20 for them so I would not consider them prohibitively expensive for experiments. But if you want to use them for meaningful power generation they are expensive but I still think they are cheaper than the pencil method =)
@@miklov In the first video he put his finger over the spot where the junction between the two graphite connections met. There was voltage between to the two graphite pencil lines. Next he put a thin piece of plastic over the junction and again touched the same spot. The reason this was important is to show there was no moisture on his finger that was connecting the two .. or from his finger. This now tells me it was the warmth or heat that caused the voltage between the two graphite lines. This is demonstrated with using the lens in this video .. no finger .. just solar heat.
Tesla said that if you knew the value of frequency / vibration .. you could understand the universe. Everything is "Energy" even X-rays which cannot be seen with the naked eye .. but colors also radiate at a specific frequency .. that our eyes pick up. This is why I am wondering if the contrast between opposing colors might also be a generator. Like what happens when you look at Red next to Green .. it is used in Art as a way to grab the attention of the eye. In nature we have a Green plant growing up .. and then there might be a Red flower .. so the Green part is supporting the flower with focused "Energy". This is quite interesting .. my theory might not be valid I don't know .. but to me it's an incredible thought.
Color Frequency - Photon Energy
Violet 668-789 THz PE 2.75-3.26 eV
Blue 606-668 THz PE 2.50-2.75 eV
Green 526-606 THz PE 2.17-2.50 eV
Yellow 508-526 THz PE 2.10-2.17 eV
Orange 484-508 THz PE 2.00-2.10 eV
Red 400-484 THz PE 1.65-2.00 eV
I was thinking you could 3d print a relief design and then do a rubbing onto paper with the pencils. I think that could be a fairly quick way to pattern the design onto the paper manually.
I love your work Robert Murray Smith! And I understand fully! Keep up the good work! /Mikael 🥸
Thank you!!!
JUST INCREDIBLE would it be possible to stack them by drawing them on clear plastic or glass ?
my thoughts exactly..
Might require the HB lead or both to be turned into a fine dust as I just tried it on plastic In the art world Pencil drawings are fixed with hair spray
@@seamuscharles9028 You've set me off now lol. Wouldn't the hair spray create a an electrical barrier? What plastic did you use and was there a good trace of different types of pencil ( graphite ) on the plastic, also what heat source were you using? Did you sandwich the plastic? and if so did you direct the heat vertically or horizontally through the plastic? Sorry for all the questions but I don't have the equipment to measure any results I may draw/etch on the plastic.
@@chrissavill8713 sadly I don't have the equipment either The 8b pencil has no problem on plastic but the harder HB has I was also thinking that a mirror could be used to reflect the Light back up through the stack
The laugh is as infectious as Jöerg Sprave from the Slingshot Channel.
Pretty neat. And maybe something can be done to improve the output.
My imediate thoughts go to it would take roughly 2,000 junctions in serries to get 1 volt. Or 20,000 for 10v. What's the internal resistance? Pencil lead isn't a great conductor so I'm guessing a 20,000 series junction will have a high internal resistance which might work for very small loads but the voltage will drop as one increases the load drawn.
When you mathematically model a voltage source with its internal resistance and an external load resistance, you'll find maximum power is transferred to the load when the load resistance = source resistance. Another example of Impedence matching and power transfer.
Hi, Keith. I think you are mistaking millivolts with microvolts. At 0.500 mV, it would just take 2 junctions to make 1 volt. Imagine 10 junctions thick enough to handle the current, and you could charge a cell phone.
@@rclewis01 Your voltmeter was showing 0.500mV, so half a millivolt (0.0005V), not half a volt, which should show up as either 0.5 V or 500 mV, so, to get 1V you would need 2000 junctions.
Hahaha, I agree. I whipped up a design on the cricut and set it to work to make hundreds of these junctions! There was one flaw I ran into... the pencil dulling. So back to the drawing board I went (pun intended) 😅
Even though light from sun doesn't heat, i think infrared light heats. Then in theory one could implement such thermal couple array into a transparent sheet or glass panel and stack vertically. Graphite is also black so it heats under sun more
I wonder if good old-fashioned carbon paper would work and if it comes in HB and 6B. It would save a lot if colouring in. Or could we grind up the graphite from the pencils (or buy it somewhere), put it into an emulsion of some sort, and then paint it on in interesting shapes.
Put the emulsions in inkjet cartridges, and use in printer
@@DavyOneness That's the spirit :)
I wonder if one could use an old pen plotter with appropriate mechanical pencils and draw cells
Youd have to advance the lead somehow
You could rig up a cheap cnc device and put a spring load on the pincels. Maybe draw it on a ceramic tile.
@@jamesstotler329 seems simple enough
Now that you say that i think i saw something similar with colored pencils
I wonder if the power would increase if two touching parallel lines were drawn on the paper instead of two lines joining at the tip. (Really enjoy your videos)
Interesting idea,maybe do a sheet of graph paper in two or more pencils.if it doesn’t work no great loss.
I used a grid, graphene in one direction and graphite(2b drawing pencil) in another. Brought them all together in rails on the sides. So I think you are on the right track there. Keep it up!
It was layered as well by the way. Not just one layer.
@James Ross what were your results?
When I was a kid I thought I was some pretty hot sh*t when I worked out I could use pencil lines on paper as very basic resistors. I went as far as scrounging components from the technology teacher at school to build a basic oscillator circuit with a piezo speaker (Copied from a book I found in the school library), and tried to make a paper "Stylophone" by drawing lines with roughly the right resistance, and trying to tune it by adding thicker lines, or rubbing at them a little to change their resistance.
It proved to be absolutely bloody impossible get all the notes even close, and some notes would change entirely just from picking up the paper to move it (My guess was that when the paper flexed it shifted the way all the flecks of graphite made contact, and altered the resistance) but it's an interesting and fun childhood memory none the less.
In the end I worked out that I could alter the volume by running another part of the circuit onto a pencil line too, and sliding a paperclip twisted on a length of wire along a pencil line would work as a variable resistor (It might have been the 9v battery power I was varying). So I used two pencil lines and two paperclips to have pitch and volume controls, and created a kind of temperamental variation on the Theremin........ and some pretty horendous sounds. :D
I thought what I was doing was pretty creative back then, but if I knew that one day I'd be seeing someone "Draw" a working thermocouple, it would have frazzled my little pre teen mind. :D
Could this be combined with your previous solar related testing using the LCD screen parts perhaps?
Brilliant 🤩
Super cool! Thanks for sharing.
That brings more ideas .. what if they were printed on a clear plastic or glass and sandwich layered. The heat would be transferred into the depth of the system .. reducing the outside surface area while increasing the output. ??? I'm also wondering if there could be a difference in graphite by using color differences .. which color is understood to be a frequency difference .. so red and black may be similar .. but contrasting colors like Red vs Green - Blue vs Orange - Yellow vs Purple.
Thanks for the shout out Rob!
I place this into the same category of awesomeness as the rain-droplet triboelectric generator with which I had some surprisingly good results. I am gonna be onboard a narrowboat for a few weeks, but I can't wait to play with this.
Black paper glued onto a heat sink would give a better heat differential 😁
i can see an artist draw it in huge paper n put some led/fiber optic as an art piece. it will draw alot of attention
Verry clever nice video
Awesome stuff mate! It explains some anomalous readings I got while dinking with Graphene.
My thoughts for others to consider...
1. Where is the potential difference?
2. Is it the potential difference in carbon of the 2 pencils leads
3. Is is the potential difference between the absorption of photons between the 2 carbon black.
4. Does the heat difference also come into play? Seems like it
5. I'd like to print Vantablack and regular ink and see the difference power
6. Is amperage based on the thickness of the line?
Run some tests and let us know.
The most fun I’ve ever seen on this channel Do it again
That is very interesting.
Does making the cell larger increase the current?
This has many possibilities.
Could you try half a page each HB with a connection in the middle and then laminate the page. to see how much more power could be generated. I wish I was more technically minded as I would do it myself.
Brilliant 👍🇮🇪
...Amazing!
Sooo cool! 😄
Now i know what to do with those IKEA Pencils..
Now to put a refined system like this on or around a rocket stove riser.
I wouldn’t see the advantage in drawing 10000 times on paper lol 👍
I wonder what would have happen if you coated the paper in pure graphene?
Amazing, looking forward to seeing more of this idea.
😀 if you could print 1 side of the thermocouple on 1 side of a page and the other half of the thermocouple on the opposite side of the page so that they meet at a point, using conductive ink. You could play with different shapes, to get better air flow for the cold side.
Humm...the difference between hot 🔥 and ❄️ works best. AND well how to increase cold side? Principle of evaporation, been used for thousands of years. Soooo..put two systems together! 💡
Evaporate water in one dish or container to cool water or make ice, and pump that water (or cooled air in the presence of ice) to the cold side thus increasing it's efficiency by magnitudes. I've done some experiments with this and it works well. Give it a go! GL!
Measure it in Watts to get an accurate difference between the difference in temp. I doubt Rob you will need more on how to build the evaporative cooler as it's easy and you probably already made one. 😂
amazing thanks
Rob You're Awesome with that eureka laughter.😂👍 hope next experiment will be using your jet stove as a source of heat or that multi fuel stove, thank you Sir.
Amazing difference with the applied heat. So simple
Love this channel...this episode got me to here - polycrystalline tin selenide of n and p type in a matrix using solar energy - now my maniacal laughter. 😜
Awesome mate!!!!
You got me thinking about thermocouples, Peltier effect, Seebeck effect and IR detectors like FLIR...well it beats thinking about the sad state of affairs - thanks for taking my mind off the crummy news :-) Use a telescope or even binoculars with the thermocouples to develop a crude IR detector/matrix camera
Woooh! Could the core be "laser printed" onto the material/paper, effectively?
If you draw several "cells" in series, will it bring the voltage up?
It will, but you'll need to expose to Sun the contract point area and to shield the rest of the "wire", so that there's temperature difference.
Im learning about so many things on this channel that Ill never use. LOL Love it.
You'll use it when they shut off the power.
@@professorfukyu744 nailed it. We will all need to go back to basics soon because the world we've been trained to exist in is collapsing.
Do the length of the lines matter? ie longer lines would give more amps? What about the intersecting points? Do they simply meet? Or do they overlap? Is more contact between the 2 types of pencil better or worse for output? Very iteresting concept!!!
I would assume longer lines would add resistance and produce less amps.
I would like to see a current measurement as well as a voltage measurement.
Later in the paper they talk about making two lines of 6b and connecting them with hb to create a peltier like device
I wonder if you made a bunch of lines of B and then two lines at the top and bottom of 6b if you'd get a small peltier device
You sir, are infectious! Thank you!! 🙏🏻😁🙏🏻
Theoretically, if you drew several connecting lines, alternating pencils every other line... three lines giving you two thermocouples, theoretically; three lines giving you two thermocouples in series, that would double your voltage output with just three lines.
One side, graphite paper. Other side, clear tape with charcoal or activated carbon "graphene" layer stuck to it. Simiar construction can be used for capacitors.
So simple, it's freakish.
In all this crazy last couple of videos I missed the exact mechanism that creates the voltage across the graphite junction. You have the line of one graphite and a mine of another with a common over lap section. Infra red photons are dislodging electrons at the boundary layer so are we saying one graphite has a different crystalline structure causing this preference or is it the non graphite components causing the exchange ?
Id figure its the amount of graphite. It probably doesnt matter what pencils or carbon you use so long as theyre different. Experiments can be run to figure out which pair has the most difference for maximum output.
Someone else was first, but if you're going to print the ink onto paper regardless, instead of/in addition to lenses print the circuits on black paper, the white paper isn't collecting as much heat, though the marking itself is, (not sure how important cooling is here) alternatively if cooling a different portion of the paper is helpful, dyes such as YInMn blue that are supposed to be capable of sub ambient cooling by radiation could be printed just as easily.
Additionally, what is to stop you from printing out a "book" worth of "sheets", separating them by an electrical insulator (blank paper?), binding them with a wiring "spine", and making a huge, cheap, thermopile?
It would be nice to see something like this with chilled heat pipes below it to improve the thermocouple temperature difference
Wow!
Didn't the neighbors call the police on the rowdy sods hanging about in the parking lot? 😂
Would be worth making a load of them to up the voltage 👍😎
so the simple desktop option is for luke to draw up the simple 10/50 track pcb with matching 'solder mask' from pcbway for a few £ that puts super/caps diodes & many double sided pads in this layout to use as your repeatable carbon mask
Nice
Would it not work better if you drew (or printed) adjoining lines?
OK ... I'm scrapping my idea of re-purposing existing solar panels ... Now I think they should come with this already fitted to the back!
A couple hundred dots on paper?! Hmmm...sounds like a good punishment for naughty children AND you get your solar cell. IF they misbehave regularly you could get a WHOLE solar panel!
So silly, but really interesting
I tried to reproduce your experiment and come to the conclusion that the paper and humidity must be quite important. Taking off the pencils graphite from paper by using an adhesiv strip and attaching my multimeter clamps to this strip nothing happens any more :-( . On the other hand raising the humidity of the paper used before the microvolts increases immediately, vice versa when drying out the "junction" spot with a small not air heater the voltage goes to zero. I was not able to reproduce something sing a fresnel or other lense. Maybe you can investigate this experiment more. looove your channel :-) cincerely yours.
perhaps I should read the paper to understand the process better, but couldn't you bind two thicknesses of charcoal to achieve the same effect and presumably generate more power?
[edit: or graphite rods cut with a 45° angle? ]
Maybe drawn on a non conductive surface in a solar oven perhaps...
if is the temp, how about multi layered drawings?
Maybe with a heat conductive substrate
Perhaps you could create anistropic lens structure that utilizes both light and heat like moth wings. Getting the juices flowing :D