The sOccket: A Soccer Ball That Generates and Stores Electricity!

While Adidas’ new Jabulani soccer ball created specially for the 2010 World Cup is receiving quite a lot of press, we think this amazing new soccer ball deserves much more attention.

The sOccket is quite simply an ingenious invention – a soccer ball that is a simple, portable generator. It uses an inductive coil mechanism similar to those found in shake-to-charge flashlights: the movement of the ball forces a magnet through a coil that induces a voltage to generate electricity.

The latest version, sOccket 2.0, is much improved: now less than 10 minutes of play yields up to 3 hours of energy for an LED light, and can power appliances such as cell phones as well.

Its designers Jessica Lin, Jessica Matthews, Julia Silverman, and Hemali Thakkar, who studied together at Harvard University, hope that the sOccket will not only help those living without electricity to have access to cheap, clean off-grid electricity, but also that it can ultimately be developed into a global health tool, for example, being used by medical professionals to power mobile phones for use as a diagnostic tool in remote areas.

Check out more about this great invention at http://www.soccket.com/.

(Photo: Jeffrey Coolidge/Getty Images)

Posted on June 18, 2010