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Now here's a juicy bit of science that I never came across myself when I was young.
This is a way of converting heat into electricity but instantly - nothing in between.
This little Peltier element here, I don't know what it's made of but it has the property
that when heat flows through it, it is converted into electrical current which then flows through
the wires, quite astonishing, it's the Seebeck effect.
So to construct it we just have to place one of these in here which is going to become the
cold tank.
This one is the hot one.
Now put some hot water in it.
Put the element in between, I'd love to know what the interior is to get the effect.
I'm going to put a clip on top. Oops., splash splash splash.
So we've got a cold water tank, now we're going to have a hot water tank, but first
of all I'm putting this on the front, so it's going to start rotating.
When the heat flows through this it's going to make electricity flow through the wires,
then this will start turning.
Up to about there.
The heat is now going to start flowing up through this little aluminium angle and warm
this side.
Goodness its working extraordinarily quickly isn't it.
So we've got therms of heat going through from hot water tank to cold water tank and
thus they are flowing through the Peltier element, its creating electricity which flows
through the wires.
Curiously enough, I haven't actually tried it, but it will actually reverse the other
way round, so if I start putting electricity through the wires the Peltier element itself
will be hot on one side and cold on the other.
Quite extraordinary thing.
And the kit itself could hardly be simpler. It's just these two little channels, bit of
water in each, one hot, one cold, and push this thing together, it takes six seconds
I would say.
That's extraordinary isn't it how quickly and readily it starts to operate.