Electric eel powered car?

What is it with people? You would think that on an engineering forum, you wouldn't get questions like these. The Huffington Post, maybe.

Whatever the eels emit, the energy comes from the food they eat. The eels are no more efficient transducers of energy than any other life form, therefore the energy equivalent of what you have to feed them will be way in excess of the electrical energy they emit.

Not to mention the energy associated with keeping their pool clean enough for them to thrive.

They say there is no such thing as a stupid question. Unless this query came from an elementary school student, my faith in that adage is shaken today.

I totally agree. I just got done telling Rt89 in a private e-mail that there were no stupid questions (as another of our esteemed colleges has said), only stupid answers. I asked this same question when I was a young fellow, but that was way before I could even use a slide rule, never mind a TI 55 IIa. So: Rt89, next time you are moved to answer your own question, you will deprive the rest of us a chance to pound on you, get silly, and maybe cause someone to do the research.

Now you know what a stupid answer is.

The person who many years ago asked, "Would it be possible to send someone to the moon" might have been accused of asking a stupid question.

There are no stupid questions; only inquiring minds.

I still can't sign in.

Amen!

Well, I've got a degree in Math and I was a computer programmer for over 20 years (IBM assembler language), so I'm not stupid. My questions were intended to be entertaining or just something interesting to think about, but obviously that's not allowed here. So, believe me, it will never happen again...

I agree with you; the post was interesting enough for me to check out the thread... I know more about eels than before. Some folks seem a little... uptight.

Running a car, r/c or otherwise, may not be practical, but what would it take to charge a battery bank? How many amps do they put out?

I agree. I thought it was a serious question. Who knows, maybe those critters would be the power source of the future. Warp Drive maybe??

I for one will not accept your denial of throwing out humor and levity.

We all need this in our Profession.

The Electric Eel Tag was the most interesting one this morning as I drank my coffee.

Provoke more thought and we all have grandbabies, maybe this is a way to interest them in our Profession.

I agree totally. If everything in the world is serious let me out...

My question is how would you "regulate" the eel and how would you connect ti to the electrical system?

And not to forget the taxation and carbon cap & trade program.

I rather enjoyed the question and had no problem understanding the slant of it. Keep it up. Kind of a humorus picture, a swimming pool full of electric eels in every back yard...

I took it as humorous and have been laughing out loud at the question and the answers for a while now...I appreciated the humor! Humor is definitely allowed...just get ready for those who have no sense of humor...If you keep up the silliness it will really drive them crazy!

I am attempting to design a circuit using the eels but to proceed I must know if the are positive or negative earthed.

The head is positive; the tail is negative.

Do you think you can solder some leads to them?

route89,

Well I would have to say that this was a lot (ok, a bit more) more interesting than some of the "my 94 Chevy won't start" type questions that seem to be around this forum. Well, if ones 94 Chevy (or whatever make one chooses) fails to start then either bring it to the scrap yard or to a mechanic and stop wasting (in)valuable space on a server somewhere.

Regards

Mr. W.A Snow

Is that not the truth.

I always like to think out of the box and it has been a fun journey through life and work.

Although this article has a humorous tone, it mentions current research on the physiology and chemistry of the electric cells of the electric eel, to explore the possibility of creating special human electric tissue for the support of implanted medical devices.

Thanks for the link.

That is a great story. It just goes to show that many answers to many questions are present in nature today. All we have to do is open our eyes to see it and then open our minds in order to fugure out how the discovery can be used, modified or adapted.

its the off the wall questions that make us go hmmmmmmmm and knock our boxes over so we have to get out of them......it is then that the next great idea comes about!

Joke or no joke, there is certainly nothing to be gained by insults and ridicule. If you don't like someone's question, click on the back button and keep your comments to yourself. I live right on the Illinois River in Ottawa, IL, and I could easily create a huge containment tank by running 2 chain link fences across the river. I could then fill this section of the river with millions of electric eels, and maintenance costs would be zero. I'll never do this because of safety issues, but theoretically I could then use the eels to charge the battery in my EV-1 and drive for free forever with zero emissions. Crazy? Absolutely - but maybe not so much. Is it crazier than crushing all the EV-1's, and then coming out with the Chevy Volt ten years later?

EV-1

Who Killed the Electric Car?

OK, forget the eels, and let's forget the animosity, too. I'm not here to make enemies or commit fraud, I'm here because you guys are smart and I think a lot about weird ideas. I appreciate the time and effort put into your comments and appologize for any inconvenience I might have caused...

Antigravity Physics Explained

Iz

Me - scroll down

emc_c,

"They say there is no such thing as a stupid question. Unless this query came from an elementary school student, my faith in that adage is shaken today". - That sounds a lot like an insult/ridicule to me.

You then compound the issue by trying to justify your comments.

"I don't control this forum" - AMEN to that, otherwise we could change the website name for the forum to "MyCarWon'tStart.com" or "NoNewIdeasAllowed.com".

Oh, bye the way, my lawnmower won't start - any ideas on what might be wrong? (FYI I am being sarcastic, I thought I should point this out to you since you clearly have an issue in interpreting the posts)

Regards

Mr. W.A Snow

Again, I say Amen...to the above.

how does it work?

Does the pet store have an eel section battery power from the tank section?

The song is obnoxious.

What is the efficiency of electric eel's output energy anyway? With all of todays genetic mapping and genetic engineering I would think there would be a way of improving efficiency, breeding eels with a higher voltage/amperage, or isolating and recreating the cells independently. I think that this could be a viable alternative with a little development.

"breeding eels with a higher voltage/amperage"

Maybe we could clone some eel genes into ourselves. Then we could run a wire out of our arse......

The researchers at Yale University, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are studying the cells of these unusual fish in an effort to create an artificial cell that replicate the electrical behavior of the electric eel cell.

They hope that by using modern science and engineering, to build upon an artificial eel cell strong enough to power medical implants.

There is a real point. There is another post "Say goodbye to batteries" that deals with the harvesting of very low amp sources of energy for portable devices. And this is a source.

With genetic engineering you could some day end up buying a pet dog that has a charge like an eel to power all of the many (and mostly useless) electronic devices people carry these days. All of the latest "Plug-in Pooch" peripherals will be the big rage for kids.

There has been so many crazy tech things going on these days that anything is possible. Even if it doesn't make sense.

the tank seems a bit much for the living room...can I just hang them on the tree? Are they compatible with through hole or surface mount LED lights?

As for that song...I don't think I wanted to make something stop that badly since my wife gave birth to our daughter with no meds...

I tend to gravitate to posts such as these, just for the humor aspect. I can look at engineering problems all day, but every once in a while a fun one like this comes around. Its great to see people get all puffed up over stuff...

And I believe It's: There are no stupid questions, but there are many inquisitive idiots. (myself included).

ditto

Doesn't help with the post:GA ration though....

Hm-m-m-m?

My conclusion after reading the posts in this thread is that there is ONE stupid question:

"How could you ask a question like that!?"

This thread needs only 1 person to help in the answer......

Sparkstation - does any one know what happened to this member? I really enjoyed his posts & input....wished us a good New Year - then he was gone....

Due to the timing of his disappearance - I suspect it was a New Years Resolution to not "waste" any more time on CR4/the computer - maybe his significant other was complaining that the honeydew (honey-do) list was getting too large.

well maybe you could tie a kite to a R/C car when there a thunder storm brewing.

Hey, don't knock electric eels (actually a species of knife-fish) as a power source !!!! For one thing, dumping one on your teenage son after exhausting all other methods to drag him out of bed and to school IS GUARANTEED to jump start his morning !!!!

As crazy as the eel thing is, the real science is that they are trying to take just the cells that the eel uses to produce electricity and grow them in a lab, like the spider cells they implanted into a goat:

Spider web goat

proteins and chemical reations

Check out this video of an electric eel powering a christmas tree in japan. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6471199287935705259#docid=1796149778151131460