Wireless electricity has always been a fictional science concept to me. About a year ago, in my English class, I was given a prompt to use twenty percent of its semester to present an idea that would contribute to advancing society.
When I walked out of that class, my thoughts were like a satellite, orbiting my mind in an attempt to find something new. However, I felt that most of my thoughts were very average. To research innovating, I came upon a man of many inventions, Nikola Tesla. It felt like traveling to a new dimension with his ideas. That was when I stumbled across Nikola Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age.
The book had various explanations for why wireless electricity is needed, andTesla’s steps failed. At first, this might sound like wireless electricity would be a waste of time for my project; however, as I researched other sources, the demand for wireless electricity was significant. At this point, I thought it could become a substantial source for the future.
According to Nikola Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age, Many flaws now were mainly economic and underdeveloped research of the energy transfer. Looking at the topic now, we have sufficient resources through past experiments to conclude whether or not it is possible.
Gathering the idea’s timeline, I set out to spend more than fifty percent of my week, or more, to fully understand the fundamentals of basic electricity. After doing so, I started to contact many people in the field. Coincidently, I had a student teacher in my physics class who was willing to help me connect with an energy systems professor at Augustana College. Through his knowledge of the system, he suggested that I give him a rough design of what I visualize the concept to be. This was my first problem in the project to describe.
After spending roughly two weeks looking at probable failures, I came to one conclusion, which ended up as the beginning. To elaborate, instead of thinking about the project’s future, I narrowed it down to electric vehicles being a test for receiving the transfer of energy. I chose electric cars over any other industry because those industries do not require the source. Subsequently, electric vehicles at my project were in high demand but also had drawbacks: Priority amperage. To summarize, priority amperage would provide more power to the car in need of more energy than the one that needs minor, which increases the time for charging.
Noticing this problem, I figured that wireless charging was the solution because they could distribute the charge on each coil based on the current input each vehicle needs. With this as my main goal, I set out to find the engineering department in my school and learn how to use AutoCAD to make a reference image to depict how the system would work.
A few weeks after submitting the project, I looked back at everything that I had done over six months and how it took me into a new realm of opportunities that I could attain. I went from being confused and skeptical about something that I knew frighteningly little of to a person who could get a vision for what I wanted the future to be. I have been working with many mentors who believe that my concept of wireless charging will extend from electric cars and reach every household. Although my project shouldn’t depend only on my mentors, meeting professors in applied physics would expand my knowledge and connect me with more significant opportunities to make this a reality.