Take a look behind your computer or home entertainment system – what is it that you see? Cables – lots and lots of cables. Of course, while those cables are a necessary evil at this point in time today, hopefully they won’t be in the near future. Researchers in the U.S. have successfully tested an experimental system that manages to deliver power to devices sans wires. In fact, this theory was tested to great success when a 60W light bulb managed to glow from a distance of 7 feet. Dubbed WiTricity, this apparent ‘miracle’ takes advantage of simple physics laws and could potentially be modified to accomodate different devices such as MP3 players, notebooks, and computers.

To get a better idea of the entire experiement, the setup consisted of a pair of 60cm diameter copper coils, a single transmitter attached to a power source, and a receiver placed two meters and hooked up to a light bulb. Turning on the transmitter’s power switch, will light up the bulb despite the lack of a physical connection. This is certainly a heartwarming development, and assuming these researchers managed to achieve this impossible feat a few centuries ago, they would probably have been executed for practising witchcraft of some sort.

Unfortunately, energy efficiency is something to be worked on as the setup just managed to transfer energy with an efficiency rate of 40% across the gap. In a world where energy conservation is a top agenda among many developed countries, such an efficiency figure will probably be frowned upon, leaving a whole lot more to work on before it is approved for commercial use. The effectiveness, however, is pretty impressive as the bulb glows even when various obstructions such as wood, metal, and electronic devices were placed in between both coils. Resonance is the keyword here.

Source: BBC