Harnessing the Renewable Energy of Chairs

In today's day and age it is becoming increasingly more important to find new ways to produce renewable energy. As a team we decided we wanted our project to address this problem. When presented with the prospect of inventing something of real use, we wanted to stick to the "hidden obvious". As a group, we began to consider the different aspects of our lives that are often overlooked. We perform a multitude of actions each day that could be easily used to produce energy. In our Cornerstone classroom, we noticed the amount of students fidgeting in their chairs during the class period. These mindless rotations, we decided, are a lost energy source. Therefore, the objective of our project was to harness the kinetic energy produced by chair rotation and store it in a battery as chemical potential energy. We designed the product to be adjustable to work on similar chairs across college campuses, office buildings, and public schools. This would allow us to gain a new energy source at no additional energy expenditure, since the rotation already occurs each day. Our design contains two gears (one adjustable and one with a central axis), a generator, a tread, a battery, and a box casing. We made one of the gears adjustable so that this product would be able to be used across a variety of chairs, and included the box casing for protection. Out of many different options for gathering energy from rotating chairs, we believe that our solution addresses the problem the best due to its versatility and convenience. Our venture is a perfect way to harness a new source of renewable energy.