Charged Debate over Electricity

There has been some recent research carried out to discover whether charges of electricity caused by humid air could be used to generate electricity. The tests which were carried out at the University of Campinas in Brazil showed that it was possible to use metals to gather the charge and then that charge could be used as part of the electricity supply. They found that the metals, when put in a wet environment got charged up and used special equipment to gather that electricity.

The amount of charge gathered is very small, much less than that gained by solar panels, but it is still a renewable source of energy that has not yet been investigated and could be successful in tropical countries.

However, scientists at the the University of Southampton disagree and feel that it is the actual method he is using that produces the charge and would not work in practise. That the equipment would be pulling the charge.

However, another set of scientists think that the research is very interesting and although the research needs to be repeated and worked on a lot in order to discover whether it is usable, they feel that it is a renewable source which should not be ignored and it is worth some time, money and effort being invested in it to find out whether it is useful.

The researcher is not worried by the controversy that his findings have caused as it is something which he feels is common in science as scientists of ten disagree on issues. There have also been other experiments with trying to get electricity from the atmosphere and they have not been good and so it is possible that the scientists who are criticising these experiments may be assuming that the results may be the same.