back to article 'Hybridisation' tech to quintuple battery life

Most of us these days find battery life an annoying issue, as our increasingly puissant personal gadgetry uses juice faster and faster. Few, however, find batteries as troublesome as modern-day soldiers do - burdened as they are with lasers, optics, radios, monocle displays and other electronic paraphernalia. Adding insult to …

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  1. Fluffykins Silver badge

    Hang on

    "capacitive and faradaic energy storage functions"

    Aren't these different names for the same thing?

    Or isn't a Farad a measure of capacitance?

  2. Hayden Clark Silver badge
    Happy

    Capacitors to boost alkalines?

    I invented this years ago :-). Put a low-leakage electrolytic across the cell of an analog quartz clock, and you get much more life out of the cell. The mechanism draws power in pulses once a second, and the cap provides the pulse instead of the cell.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    or...

    Wireless power, something that appeared to be possible back in Tesla's day.

  4. Will Shaw

    Simples

    They just need to have a word with my kids. Their Wii controllers NEVER run out of batteries, according to them. I just need to figure out where all the batteries I buy actually are going.....

  5. Colin 4
    Coffee/keyboard

    More effort on DARPA descriptions please

    I remember when DARPA descriptions were sure-fire keyboard-ruiners. Like how about this gem :

    "The Pentagon's famous bad-boy scientists, DARPA* - who slap the pendulous jowls of established wisdom with the gauntlet of disregard ?"

    Or this one :

    "the famous Pentagon research bureau which, when scrumping apples from the tree of knowledge, ignores the low-hanging fruit in favour of the harder-to-reach pomaceous treat which often turns out to be beyond its reach."

    Or :

    "DARPA* - who are to ordinary insane scientists in their dungeon laboratories as platinum-selling popsters are to teenage-saddo garage bands"

    Nowadays you hardly even seem to be trying Lewis. "renowned Pentagon brainiac-breeding bureau" - not bad, but not brilliant.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    why not

    talk to Trevor Baylis

  7. Coltek

    Where do they buy their batteries?

    I bet the bunny is laughing all the way to the bank!

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Faradaic ?

    Faradaic means electrochemical - capacitance is the result of ion separation rather than electron separation as in a conventional (physical) capacitor.

  9. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Happy

    Whatever happened to..

    The miniature turbine and direct drive generator manufactured (iirc) by photoetching and miniature machining. I think it was right in the 10-20W range so battery replacement was definitely part of their game plan.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    "LOTS-o-Energy"?

    Yeah right!

    Give us some credit.

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