Ipod torches kids hiney....

As technology allow more and more energy to be place in smaller and smaller objects this kind of event is going to become more common.

When the new technology of super-capacitors come on line with hundred of farads in a similar small object to a current IPOD battery and then short circuit someone is going to loss a leg at least.

How much would you expect to be stored in a 100 farad capacitor?

Let see energy would be by e=1/2*cv^2 so assuming a ten volt charge we would get 1/2 of 100000 or 50ooo joules.

Or put into another content 14 watt hours however this energy could be released in millseconds not in powering a 14 watt bulb for an hour in a failure mode. No battery even a car battery can come near to the ability of a capacitor to discharge it total energy within millseconds.

Say we have a nice slow discharge of the super capacitor taking a whole second to discharge so instead we would get 50,000 watt second of power flowing in your pocket IPOD.

Assuming my fast math is correct it would be simialar to having 11 grams of TNT going off in your pocket.

I had seen a bank of capacitors shorted out with a heavy screw driver once melting the end of said screw driver completley and driving the melted metal through the metal case of the power supply.

All in all not something I would like to see happen in my pocket.

Oh assuming that we have the abiltity to charge such a capacitor up to a 100 volts and then used electronic circuits to bring the voltages down to a useful level to work a IPOD. The total energy now would be not 14 watt hours but 1400 watt hours!!!!!!!!!

Just times everything I had writen in my last post by a factor of 100.

Hell I just can see the advs never need to recharge your IPOD run it for a life times off it super capacitor!