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posted by janrinok on Tuesday November 15 2016, @10:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the smart-dressed-man dept.

Inspired by Marty McFly's self-lacing Nikes, Associate Professor Jayan Thomas, a nanotechnology scientist at the University of Central Florida's NanoScience Technology Center, developed solar-powered filaments that also store energy and can be woven into textiles.

"That movie was the motivation," Thomas said. "If you can develop self-charging clothes or textiles, you can realize those cinematic fantasies – that's the cool thing."

The smart textiles would act as wearable solar-powered batteries that could charge our devices and carry out different functions themselves thanks to the renewable power source.

The filaments are made from thin copper ribbon with solar cells on one side and an energy storing layer on the other. Using a table top loom, Thomas and his team were able to weave the filaments into a square of yarn. The ease with which they were able to produce a textile with these filaments prove that the smart textile could either be used as a part or make up the entirety of outer layer clothing like jackets to power personal health tracking devices, smartphones and more.


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  • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @11:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @11:04PM (#427255)

    Women don't wear enough fabric to make solar fabric practical. Today's active trendy slim woman exposes the maximum amount of her skin as modesty will allow, leaving very little area to be covered by fabric.

    Men don't go outside long enough to be exposed to sunlight. The future is female, and today's modern man is systematically denied employment, leaving him to a dark gloomy basement dwelling existence.

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  • (Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @11:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 15 2016, @11:17PM (#427261)

    Women don't wear enough fabric to make solar fabric practical. Today's active trendy slim woman exposes the maximum amount of her skin as modesty will allow, leaving very little area to be covered by fabric.

    That will change now that misogyny is now openly accepted and embraced in our Brave New Trump World (tm, Trump Enterprises). If a woman can be punched in the face by a Trump supporter for being overheard talking to her friend about her support for Hillary while eating in a restaurant, whose to say what will happen if a Grab Our Pussy party member sees a scantily clad woman. Expect a trend toward the Christian version of the Burka soon.

    Men don't go outside long enough to be exposed to sunlight.

    That much probably won't change appreciably, particularly as our incomes decline and the cost of going out further discourages any emergence from our man caves.

    The future is female, and today's modern man is systematically denied employment, leaving him to a dark gloomy basement dwelling existence.

    The future has been cancelled.

    • (Score: 1) by kurenai.tsubasa on Tuesday November 15 2016, @11:49PM

      by kurenai.tsubasa (5227) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @11:49PM (#427279) Journal

      The future has been cancelled.

      Well, this alternate future at least. See, this all has to do with the documentary mentioned in TFS. Back in 1955, Donald Trump received a copy of Grays Sports Almanac that was purchased in 2016. I'm thinking the 2015 date was a blooper in the documentary since it was obviously this year that the Cubs won the world series. I think it was some kid from California that goes back and sets it all right in one of those goddamned stable time loops.

      Photographic proof here [blogspot.com] of Donald Trump in both the vicinity of an ok looking taco bowl and the Grays Sports Almanac.

      I'm expecting the temporal displacement wave from 1955 any moment now. In fact I'm picking up a source of chronoton radiation on the sensors now. Just a few more moments and we can get back to celebrating the victory of President-Elect Elizabeth Warren.

      (I'll have to check in with Chronometrics. I'm sure there's a complicated reason involving bootstrap paradoxes to explain why the hell that lizard person [wikia.com] Hillary was running in the timeline. Ugh, time travel. To quote Captain Janeway, “The past is the future. The future is the past. Gives me a headache.”)

      Just think of it. With taco trucks on every corner we'll be able to finally get decent taco bowls all thanks to President Warren.

      Any moment now….

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Tuesday November 15 2016, @11:18PM

    by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday November 15 2016, @11:18PM (#427264)

    The more sun there is, the less clothes people wear, which you combine with sub-optimal fabric-woven efficiency to get a power figure in the "not much" range.
    Then you realize that most people don't walk outside on all fours, so that's another 40% gone for not having the fabric perpendicular to the sun...

    By the time you do the math, you're better off putting a basic solar panel on your hat (bonus production for the English ladies at the horse races).

    Solar top hats are the future of shitty-battery phones!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:47AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @03:47AM (#427344)

      It's probably worse than that, as all the 'solar bits' aren't even going to be aligned with the outside of the garment. But randomly aligned all over the twisting thread.

    • (Score: 2) by Murdoc on Thursday November 17 2016, @04:09AM

      by Murdoc (2518) on Thursday November 17 2016, @04:09AM (#427952) Homepage

      You're right. Weaving this into clothing is not a smart move. However, what about beach umbrellas, patio umbrellas, and parasols? Those all come out when it's most sunny.