Tunxis New Media

Something the new media students didn’t think about in their presentations. Yet, to play with puns, was “in the air”

In a paper published today in Science, Soljajic and colleagues describe their lighting of a 60-watt light bulb with energy sent across a seven-foot gap, proving that such a system is indeed possible.

Soljacic began his search for wireless transmission several years ago after being awakened by the beeping of his uncharged cell phone. “It occurred to me that it would be so great if the thing took care of its own charging,” he said.

The system, dubbed WiTricity, takes advantage of the tendency of objects that resonate at the same frequency to pick up each other’s vibes. Just as the strings on an acoustic guitar vibrate in the presence of notes played on another guitar, so energy can be sent between a transmitter and a receiver with the same electromagnetic resonance.

Soljacic contrasts WiTricity with a radio station’s transmitter, which “emits energy omnidirectionally. Your receiver gets a billionth of that — the sound information is encoded in energy — but that isn’t good for energy transmission.”