Ever thought about all of the energy that’s expended on soccer fields every day? Well, four female Harvard students did and decided to take that thought one step further. Jessica Lin, Jessica Matthews, Julia Silverman, and Hemali Thakkar have developed a soccer ball that is a portable, energy-storing power source. It’s called sOccket.
sOccket captures the energy from a soccer ball’s impact during the regular course of play. This is energy that is normally lost when you kick, dribble, or throw a ball. The energy is then stored inside the ball for future use. Fifteen minutes of play with sOccket can generate enough power to sustain an LED light for three hours.
In many rural, developing communities, three hours of light is just enough to finish your homework when the sun goes down. For soccer-crazy communities where electricity is a scare commodity, sOccket is an incredibly innovative energy solution and empowerment tool.
But let’s take sOccket’s potential impact one step further. sOccket doesn’t just provide a simple energy solution, it also provides a total mind and body solution. I know, I sound like a Bowflex commercial, but hear me out.
In order to get electricity to do your homework, sOccket requires you to exercise first. You get where I’m going with this one? Typically, it’s not children in developing countries who suffer from a lack of activity, it’s children right here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. So here’s the U.S. application for sOccket. We pull some of the U.S. power grids offline. Then we tell kids (and parents for that matter), you want to watch television? Go exercise first. Here’s your sOccket.
The women from sOccket are on to something. Their first marketing partner should be Michelle Obama, who can wrap sOccket into her childhood obesity campaign. The pitch to parents: Save Electricity, Stay Healthy. We’ll hand out subsidies for sOccket, and then charge outrageous rates for electricity. You don’t like it, then go play soccer.
Alright, maybe there are a few kinks to work out …
To learn more about sOccket, check out their website at www.sOccket.com.
[...] Technology is amazing, take a look at the sOccket, the energy producing soccer ball – Nutmeg Radio [...]
[...] few months ago, we brought you news about sOccket, a soccer ball that doubles as a portable, energy-storing power source. Since then, the sOccket [...]