Modern festival-goers who dread ending up with a dead mobile phone battery after days stuck in a muddy field with no electric plug power points may now have a solution -- power boots.
Mobile phone company European Telco Orange has introduced a phone charging prototype -- a set of thermoelectric gumboots or Wellington boots with a 'power generating sole' that converts heat from the wearer's feet into electrical power to charge battery-powered hand-helds.
The boot was designed by Dave Pain, managing director at GotWind, a renewable energy company.
这款靴子由GotWind可再生能源公司总经理戴夫·佩恩设计。
Pain said the boot uses the Seebeck effect, named after physicist Thomas Johann Seebeck, in which a circuit made of two dissimilar metals conducts electricity if the two places where they connect are held at different temperatures. "In the sole of the Wellington boot there's a thermocouple and if you apply heat to one side of the thermocouple and cold to the other side it generates an electrical charge," Pain said.
"That electrical charge we then pass through to a battery which you'll find in the heel of the boot for storage of the electrical power for later use to charge your mobile phone."
“这些电荷会传至鞋跟处的一个蓄电电池上，在需要时可为手机充电。”
These thermocouples are connected electrically, forming an array of multiple thermocouples (thermopile). They are then sandwiched between two thin ceramic wafers.
这些热电偶通过电力连接在一起，形成一系列的热电偶（也称热电堆），夹在两块陶瓷薄片之间。
When the heat from the foot is applied on the top side of the ceramic wafer and cold is applied on the opposite side, from the cold of the ground, electricity is generated.
当脚部的热量作用于上层陶瓷薄片，较冷的地面作用于下层的陶瓷片时，电就产生了。
After a full day's festivalfrolics music lovers can plug their phone into the power output at the top of the welly and use the energy generated throughout the day to charge their phone.
