Is it true that scientists have learned to convert human stress into electricity?

According to a popular meme, scientists have discovered how to turn stress into electricity. Judging by the reactions of Internet users, many would also like to have a similar skill. And we checked whether this story has a truthful basis.

The meme has been circulating on the Internet for several years. Its essence is as follows: first, the picture shows a photo of a strange material and a Russian or English news headline about scientists who have learned to transform stress into electricity, and then an image of some electric character from pop culture marked “me.” It could be the god of thunder Thor from Marvel comics films, the lightning-throwing emperor Palpatine from "Star Wars" Raiden from the Mortal Kombat series of games, as well as other heroes movie, anime And games. There are versions And simpler - only with a title and without a character.

Sometimes the headlines mention material specially invented by scientists, and most often the name of the original source site, Interesting Engineering, remains on the screenshots. In November 2017 there really is came out article entitled Scientists Can Now Transform Stress into Electricity. But there is one caveat.

In continuum mechanics exists physical quantity “mechanical stress” or in English stress. Therefore, the news headline can be translated as follows: “Scientists can now convert mechanical stress into electricity.” Therefore, it was not about human stress, although the phrase out of context could be understood that way. There is also a special explanation in the subtitle of the text: “Researchers from Switzerland have created a material that produces electricity when twisted and stretched.” And on the Phys.org website, which was referred to in Interesting Engineering, used expression when stressed – “under (mechanical) stress.” By the way, the sample photo used in the memes is also available at that link.

The author of the news article probably wrote a libertine headline on purpose, because she herself joked about superpowers in the first paragraph: “If you don’t have superpowers, then your stress probably produces nothing but anxiety and tears. However, in 2017, scientists developed an organic material that can convert stress (or mechanical stress - Ed.) into electricity.”

The material itself is a thin elastic film that functions due to the piezoelectric effect - process the occurrence of electrical polarization in a substance during elastic deformations (or under the influence of mechanical stress). That is, the point is that movement generates electricity. The new substance was created by a team from Empa, the Swiss Federal Laboratory for Materials Science and Technology.

Because the film produces electricity when stretched and twisted, many potential uses have been proposed for it, such as pressure sensors, a new type of control button, and sensitive skin for robots. The idea of ​​installing film in clothing to monitor the wearer's actions or to generate electricity from his movements was also mentioned.

In theory, this material could be used to extract energy from the human body: the film could be implanted near the heart to generate electricity from the heartbeat. For example, this would help power a pacemaker so that there is no need to carry out operations to replace the battery.

However, scientists have not yet learned how to carry out such installation operations. In addition, engineers from other universities and laboratories have been create their piezoelectric materials for charging pacemakers, and somewhere even carried out animal testing.

It turns out that the meme is based on real news, the headline of which was incorrectly translated.

Image: Still from the trailer for Thor: Ragnarok

Taken out of context

What do our verdicts mean?

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2. Phys.org. A flexible material that generates electricity when stressed
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