The Year 2125:
Child (whining): Mooommm! I dont wannna eat my spinach!
Mom (comforting voice): That's ok darling muffin... we'll just use it's photosynthetic properties and some detergent to make electricity.
Child: That's great mom... you want my peas too?
Mom: Yes my little ragamuffin, your peas too!
Now... eat your grubs and termites... you need the protein. ~~~~~~~~
"Scientists chose spinach both for its high chlorophyll content, which makes it dark green, and its low cost. Green peas would have served as well, but spinach is cheap, plentiful and readily available. "You can buy nice bags of washed baby spinach, and you can get that year-round," Bruce said."
Spinach power for batteries By Katie Zezima The New York Times Saturday, November 13, 2004 http://www.iht.com/articles/2004/11/12/business/ptfood13.html
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts Parents and doctors have long talked up the powerful properties of spinach. Now an unlikely group has joined the chorus: researchers seeking to put more oomph in batteries.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Tennessee, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency have found a way to harness the energy that plants use during photosynthesis to convert light to energy. They are using the process to extend the life of batteries in mobile phones, laptop computers and other portable electronic devices.
While the research is still at an early stage and scientists say that commercial applications are years away, they say the discovery chips away at the barriers between nature and technology.
"This really shows that there is a way of using biologically produced molecules and coupling them directly into applied electronic circuitry," said Barry Bruce, an associate professor of biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and one of the scientists working on the project.
"This opens up a gateway for applied application, whether you want to make DNA wires or enzymatically based reactor cells."
This was the first time that scientists were able to extract "something as fundamental as an electrical current" from photosynthesis, Bruce said. While previous efforts have produced currents that lasted for a few hours, this group of scientists produced an electrical current that lasted for three weeks.
Earlier efforts to extract a current from photosynthesis failed because the proteins that capture energy from sunlight died without water. But Shuguang Zhang, the associate director of the Center for Biomedical Engineering at MIT, was able to create a peptide detergent from amino acids that stabilized the protein and allowed it to channel energy.
Zhang said the researchers liquefied spinach in a centrifuge. They extracted the protein and placed it, with spaces between each protein, on a chip. The peptide detergent was inserted in the spaces, and in an example of a process known as self-assembly, the two parts locked like fingers holding hands, Zhang said. [...]
The device, which looks like a square microchip about a half-inch, or 1.3 centimeters, on a side with green liquid visible inside, will not be able to power electronics on its own, Zhang said. Rather, it will wrap around a battery much like a leather case envelops a mobile phone, and use the power of light to prolong the life of the battery.
"If we can put it on three dimensions, we can get some use from the juice," Zhang said.
[ Funny scientist... ha ha. // lcm] [...] Leigh Meyers leighcmeyers at yahoo.com