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Subject:
Crystal Radio Power
Category: Science Asked by: jade_nj-ga List Price: $18.00 |
Posted:
02 Jan 2005 17:27 PST
Expires: 01 Feb 2005 17:27 PST Question ID: 450635 |
How much power does a crystal radio generate? What determines the output? Can crystal radios be constructed in series or parallel to increase voltage and current? What components need to be replicated? Does each need a separate antenna? Is there a practical limit to the number of units that can be connected together? Can I drive a lamp? an LED? a load (motor) from such a set-up? |
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There is no answer at this time. |
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Subject:
Re: Crystal Radio Power
From: pinkfreud-ga on 02 Jan 2005 17:33 PST |
You've essentially asked nine questions here. In order to get a good answer, you may want to consider raising your price considerably. |
Subject:
Re: Crystal Radio Power
From: jade_nj-ga on 02 Jan 2005 18:00 PST |
Price raised 9x$2 = $18.00 |
Subject:
Re: Crystal Radio Power
From: jonathandursi-ga on 02 Jan 2005 20:59 PST |
The thing to remember here is that it isn't the crystal radio that is generating the power; the power is being transmitted by some distant broadcaster, and is being recieved by the antenna. The crystal radio -- the stuff attached to the antenna -- is just a way of filtering out some frequencies from all the signals being recieved from the antenna and converting that into audio. This starts to make the rest of the questions easier to answer. It is the antennae that you really need to replicate to absorb more energy; the conversion into whatever useful form you want (audio, or DC to drive an LED) does not need to be replicated. Realistically, these antenna are going to need to be some sizeable fraction of a wavelength away from each other, which is going to set the practical number you can string together. (Think of the distance between bars in a television antenna people used to have on their roofs; you can't make the antenna more compact just by moving the bars closer together, as the antenna won't work in the same way). This consideration, amongst others, is why people who have tried such experiments in the past to use very high frequency radio waves, such as microwaves, for power-transmission uses. An example of flying a model airplane without its own power source -- powered only by microwaves beamed from the ground -- is shown here; http://www.kurasc.kyoto-u.ac.jp/space-group/sps/milax-e.html And another URL discusses the possibility of sending power from solar sattellites to the surface of the Earth with microwaves - http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/solar_power_sats_011017-1.html |
Subject:
Re: Crystal Radio Power
From: mikebrinn-ga on 03 Jan 2005 11:00 PST |
And it would not be a good idea to try the microwave thing with parts from the kitchen -- you could cook yourself I think. |
Subject:
Re: Crystal Radio Power
From: jonathandursi-ga on 03 Jan 2005 13:02 PST |
Mike Brinn makes an excellent point; don't mess with microwaves unless you know what you're doing; your body will do an excellent job of absorbing microwaves and converting the energy into heat (or worse). If you're interested in more quantitative answers about how much power can be transmitted this way, you need to know something about the power being broadcast, and the geometry of the receiving antenna array. For a transmitter broadcasting isotropically at some average power level P at some distance r away from you, there will be a transmitted power density at your position of (P / (4 pi r^2)). The amount of energy your antenna can ideally absorb is usually described in terms of an effective area (see for instance http://farside.ph.utexas.edu/teaching/jk1/lectures/node83.html ). For a simple dipole antenna, receiving at a wavelength of lambda, the effective area is about lambda^2/8; other antenna geometries will give different effective areas, but that's a good baseline to consider from. This means that the power available in principle to drive a load is something like 0.01 (lambda/r)^2 P. Now, some of this power will be lost in the antenna feed and in conversion, so this is an upper limit. On the other hand, if a directional antenna is being used to transmit the power in a more focussed way to the reciever, that will increase the amount of power available to you. Since the original context was crystal radios, let's imagine an AM radio station, transmitting at about 25,000 kW at around 1,000 kHz somewhere near your hometown (say within 30 km). I don't know what the effective area of one of those coil antennae are, but let's imagine it's about the same as a dipole (although I assume it's significantly smaller). The wavelength of the AM signal is about 300 m, so we have something like 0.01 (300m/30000m)^2 25,000 kW = 0.025 W |
Subject:
Re: Crystal Radio Power
From: jonathandursi-ga on 03 Jan 2005 13:06 PST |
Whoops, typo; that should be *either* 25,000 W or 25 kW, not 25,000 kW (which would be a scarily strong broadcasting station!) If it were actually 25,000 kW, then the recieved power would be 25W, not 0.025 W. |
Subject:
Re: Crystal Radio Power
From: joezero-ga on 15 Jan 2005 15:28 PST |
I once read a tale. Farmer owns land around powerful radio transmitter. Puts cables in his fields and gets free power. Presumably it would work being very close to the source, but for every Watt he extracted whoever owned the transmitter would have to put in an extra Watt. |
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