They say there's no use crying over spilled milk but it turns out tears can have a use
after all; generating electricity.
Well more accurately an enzyme in tears, lysozyme, can be used to generate a tiny amount of electricity.
Lysozyme is also found in saliva, mucus, egg whites, and milk, so spilled milk seems to
be an untapped energy gold mine.
Researchers have been studying lysozyme for decades.
Back in 1965 it was the second protein structure and first enzyme shape that was ever mapped
out.
But only recently was its electrical property discovered when researchers placed a film
of lysozyme crystals between two plates of glass and squeezed.
Yep, that's all it took.
Electricity from a squeeze.
It's known as Piezoelectricity, and it's much more common than you might realize.
The phenomenon was discovered in 1880 by Pierre and Paul-Jacques Curie.
Yes, as in the husband and brother-in-law of double Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie.
Apparently 90% of science back then was done by somebody with the last name Curie.
Today inkjet printers, earbud speakers, and acoustic-electric guitars use piezoelectricity
by deforming a crystal and creating voltage.
Not all crystals can generate electricity though.
Piezoelectric crystals work because their basic repeating building block that makes
them up is asymmetrical.
Normally the electrical charges of the atoms in the building block are balanced out by
other nearby atoms, but when the crystal is deformed, some atoms are pushed close together
while others are moved farther apart, upsetting the balance.
The net effect is a positive charge on one side of the crystal and a negative charge
on the other.
Quartz is a commonly used piezoelectric material and according to the researchers, lysozyme
rivals it in efficiency.
But unlike quartz, lysozyme is a biological material, meaning it's non-toxic so it can
have use for medical applications.
Well, non-toxic to us, the enzyme helps break down bacterial cell walls.
So researchers imagine this protein could be used to coat medical implants to make them
electroactive AND anti-microbial.An implant like this could use your own heartbeat to
generate power for a pacemaker, getting rid of the need for batteries what will eventually
run flat and need to be replaced.
So the next time you're crying over spilled milk, maybe it'll cheer you up to know that
one day your tears could power a medical breakthrough.
If you've got a sob story or one that makes people cry tears of joy, you need to get it
out there!
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