Soccket and see

It might sound daft, but a soccer ball which doubles as a battery has just won an innovation prize from Popular Mechanics magazine.
Soccket is a soccer ball which has an inductive coil inside it. When the ball is knocked around, kinetic energy is stored as electricity and will provide a few hours of power for a simple LED lightbulb.
It sounds like a Christmas gift idea, at best, but it is causing serious interest in Africa, where” field trials” are being carried out.

Pictured above is the team’s second prototype, which they say plays just like a normal soccer ball but contains a magnetic induction mechanism for generating power. While the original version only worked with an LED light, the sOccket 2.0 uses a standard DC jack for powering other electronics as well.
It was dreamt up by a group of Harvard students is harnessing the power of the world’s most. Hemali Thakkar, one of the co-creators of sOccket,said the extra hardware adds 6 ounces to the standard 15-ounce soccer ball.

I wonder whether the energy used to kick the ball around is actually consuming more calories than the light it eventually gives off?

hey’re still looking for manufacturers, but there’s been some suggestion of a model like TOMS Shoes in which buying a ball in a Western country would result in one being distributed in a developing nation.

Go to the web site in order to pre-order a ball once it is commercially released.