It is Christmas and this is the time when kids and grown ups alike get a chance to wander around and spend time trying to find that appealing gift. I was checking out the website Hammacher.com and found a number of toys to demonstrate applications of alternative energy sources.
One that caught my attention was the World’s smallest hydrogen fuel cell car which is on sale for $59.95 (almost half price!). This car won the Time Magazine inventions award. It has a fuel cell, which uses real hydrogen generated by the charging station it comes with. The charging station can be solar powered, or you can use AA batteries. By using electrolysis, the power station produces hydrogen which fills out a balloon inside the little car. Then the car produces electricity to drive a small motor. This is a nice toy to prove to your friends and kids, that this is truly a technology that can be harnessed today.
There is a fuel cell experiment kit. This one is also a winner. With the Silver Medal Award from the Parents Choice Foundation, this kit comes with 30 experiments. This is another car that can be run with solar power, and comes with everything necessary to understand how a fuel cell works- From electrolysis, to generation of electricity, by chemical reaction with oxygen. If you really want to go advanced, Daido Metal produces the car in the picture in the beginning of this post. It is about 8 inches long and if you feed water to this toy, it will run.
Nokia Fuel Cell Blue Tooth Headset based on the Nokia HS-3W headset. This headset contains a 66-mwatt fuel cell which you can fill up with methanol and it can operate for 10 hours. The set is not yet on the market.
It is amazing how many applications you can find just by doing a search on Google. Most are not very expensive and are efficient. It seems that the Germans and Japanese are really wanting to bring to the public, products that are practical. More resources are below:
This is a link to fuelcellstore.com.
They distribute a number of power sources you may want to check, like the 20W 24V fuel cell system.
Other toys that I will mention:
Honda has a fuel cell scooter. Honda FC Stack.
