Yet another renewable source of energy -- This time it is Football

click here to watch Soccket in action

It is a bitter truth to know that there are still some areas on this planet where common public dwell but purely depend only on the natural source of light other than electricity. These people are ignorant about the benefits of electricity and are at a million miles distance to artificial light. They spend their nights in darkness and occasionally depend on few oils for lighting up the home. Yes these are the pathetic lives of several citizens of rural Africa. These areas are off the grid and installation of solar panels and wind mills is not feasible and thus these areas are cursed with lack of electric facility. According to a survey by United nations Secretary General nearly 1.3 billion people or about one in five in the world lack basic electricity at home. So when the sun goes down in these villages there will be no electric lights to pierce the darkness and people depend on Kerosene and candles for light that too if they have money. So their life is always interrupted by darkness.
While entire world has plenty of time to carryout their work these people have only half that time to complete those tasks. With this problem students out their couldn't excel in their fields. Even though several attempts were made to transform our urban lives better, very few attempts were made in the history to address the miserable lives of rural Africa. One such initiative was taken by a group of four at Harvard University. Among these four women, some of them are aware of the lives of people in rural Africa and decided to design a renewable source of energy that can best fit into the lifestyle of the dwellers. After a rigorous brainstorming among themselves the solution came out to be a "Foot ball". Yes you read it right. They chose a football as a source to fight their darkness because, football is very much there in the lifestyle of Africans and every kid who goes to school will some way or other spend some time playing football. This game has penetrated deep into their academic lifestyle. So, the idea was to make use of this Football habit of the kids in school to light their homes during night. This was the core idea of their design and established a start up "Uncharted Play" ,around the concept and began designing its flagship product, a soccer ball that would also generate electricity.

The basic Idea:-
The exact functioning of the football enabled electricity generation was kept a secret but the core idea is to have a pendulum inside the ball that swings as the kid kicks it and rolls it. That pendulum turns gears on a motor that creates electricity, which is stored in a battery. With this football, for 30 minutes of play we can suck 3 hours of electricity from the ball. Seems interesting!!! but there are some design challenges in manufacturing this kind of football. With all the circuitry and batteries inside the ball, it weighs a bit more than the natural football. Natural football weighs around 400-500 gm but the "Soccket ball" as they call it weighs around 800 gm about double the weight. This increased weight makes it annoying for the kids to play with it and most of the kids are afraid of giving the ball a header.

Future developments:-
The designers are working on to reduce the weight of the ball by the efficient design of inside circuitry and  
also selecting light weight materials which can sustain the punishment that a football usually get. With these sort of modifications the company developed a modified version which weighs around 480 gm and with the natural bounce as that of the natural football. The company also shipped some balls to the remote African schools and from the schools to students who can play with it and can light their homes during nights. This allows the parents to encourage their kids to play football at school which is a good sign.

This design got a terrific response in Kickstarter campaign and it also grabbed the attention of several big brains.
“It’s an idea for clean energy that I think it’s fair to say hardly anyone else on the planet had ever thought of,”  former President Bill Clinton said last year during a Clinton Global Initiative talk.
It's really amazing to generate electricity from the things that we use on a daily basis because we are involuntarily lighting our homes and of course with added fun. So with these kind of footballs don't mind if you had a long workout in the football field because the more you play the more time you are going to feel the warmth of the artificial light...
                                        Go buddy kick it kick it harder..............

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