A 16-year-old boy invented a hamster-powered mobile phone charger as part of his GCSE science project.

Peter Ash, of Lawford, Somerset, attached a generator to his hamster"s exercise wheel and connected it to his phone charger.

Elvis does the legwork while Peter charges his phone in an economically and environmentally friendly way.

Read more... (Ananova)

this may be economically viable but how does he get the hamster to run when he needs to recharge. Also if the hamster (elvis) is forced to run some how is this not animal cruelty and therefore not enironmentally viable?

Hamsters love running. I had one.

oh im sure they do but give them a chance, let them run free

Gezbo - I wish you just shut the hell up. It is a freakin' hamster, and it is a freakin' science project, not some kind of free Willie event. A kid used his brain to do an interesting project and all you can say ('how does he make the hamster run when he needs a recharge...' or 'animal cruelty' - give it a rest. If you own a leather belt or shoes, or eat meat of any sort, would that not constitute animal cruelty of a greater degree? So please do us all a favor - go read other places, we have no time nor the space for tardos like you.

BTW, when was the last time you invented anything? Just what I thought.
I know you would love to ask me that same question...my answer is I invented things just last week, and week before, etc.
Bye moron.

Well said, Passer-by. I think its a neat science project. It's not animal cruelty because the boy doesn't force the hampster to run. The hampster simply runs when it feels like it, and doesn't even know he's charging the phone. He doesn't notice any difference at all. Ofcourse there is the factor of unreliability in this. What if the hampster is in a lazy mood when the boy needs a recharge? Obviously, this is best for overnight charging, because hampsters love to run at night (i had one, trust me it was annoying).

passer-by - Have you no sense of humor? And are you arrogant enough to dismiss an arguement in a fit of rage, rather than logically concluding against it(or better yet, just ignoring it)?

Now, troll-stomping aside, 2 minutes running = 30 mins talk time, thats an energy factor of 15, approx how much energy does it take to talk on a mobile phone? my half-a-significant-figure calculations point to 0.92W. Considering how close it is to a watt, I am coining this unit of measurement the Hampster-Watt(Hw)

So, that means in order to power a lightbulb, we're looking at approx 90 hampsters, powering a desktop computer would take 150-200(a workstation, not a gaming rig :-P)

So, my question: how many Hampster-Watts would it take to power a monitor big enough to display pictures of rolling fields to all the hampsters that are powering it?

Hmm....I found that cell phones have two power settings, one for short and one for long range, using 0.6 and 3 watts, respectively, not counting non-RF electronics - I beleive one was for short and one was for long range signals.

Ok, so lets say it was on the low setting using 0.6 watts for 30 minutes, the hamster has a power ratio of 15, so the hamster is generating about 9 watts - not counting any loss of energy through conversion...

That is a seriously *** powerful hamster, considering I did a quick look and found this:

http://www.aladdinpower.com/apAladdinPower.html

This is a company that sells hand pumped generators for charging cell phones. 90 pumps/minute gives 1.6 watts - and from reviews it says this is fairly strenuous. There is a foot pumped model that can generate up to 6 watts...I find it hard to beleive that a hamster can generate more power than a human using his full body weight.

Also, this site actually built one of these things - with a little work you can calculate that they estimated their hamster would max out at (2 Volts)(0.2 amps)=0.4 watts - even with different settings this is over an order of magnitude different than the kid's results.

Was the kid cheating? Could this by why he recieved a C on the project?

Sorry. The second site I was referring to is here:

http://www.otherpower.com/hamster.html

ok so maybe i got on my high horse about the whole hamster powered phone charger, maybe we could breed hampsters with elephants, they can then have power and endurance to create grater hampster-watts. but we'll have to make a bigger wheel or wheels depends on the size of power you need.
happy?

by the way the last thing i invented was the trampoline bike just after the voltage optimizing unit for tescos, by dropping the voltage from 255v to 210v you cansave up to 14% of energy consumed.

after reading the site submitted it is an exellent report exept for the idea and conclusion. but that doesn't matter because i don't wear leather, wool etc i am a post modern vegetarian, i eat meat ironically. i.e fish and duck.....they're in the water half of the time and anything else that lives near water, cattle deer.

you asked me weather or not i have invented anything, yea i have and its not out of lego like yourself.

bye idiot,
as you will come to your own demise due to your own stupidity.

Hi all you amicable wackos!...
Have you all seen "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory".... great research material. All this talk of trained hamsters remind me about that scene with all the trained squirrels who are cracking nuts in the sterile lab environment. Then that dumb kid is demanding a trained squirrel from her dad... she then takes the whole "squirrel acquisition activity" into her own hands and is nearly "wasted" by a hoard of rather belligerent squirrels who think she is a "bad nut". It seems to me rather inefficient to feed a hamster to run on a treadmill to charge a cell phone when I am sure the energy requirement of the hamster exceeds the energy requirements of a battery charger using the mains. Why put this hamster to all this misery just because we can?

This hamster and the squirrel are paradigms for our misuse of the environment and the inherent inhumanity of thoughtless technological man when really this hamster could be better put to use with "Hamster TV" and "Spa" powered by the overindulgent owner using a treadmill or an exercise bike attached to a series of lead acid rechargeable cells. Now while the Hamster is inefficient to recharge cell phones the human will always be inefficient and will want to lose kilojoules by "working out". This is just the sort of "behavior" all hamsterdom and squirreldom requires to keep them in harmony with their environment. All "super sized" men and women should be issued with a very lazy hamster (or squirrel) and allowed to lavish all manner of modern white goods and electrical accessories on them.... all requiring copious amounts of human provided sources of energy. The owner deciding just how much weight they need to lose to be perfect 10's. The hamsters and squirrels could then be sent to new owners to help out when their job is done for their first "satisfied" owner. Maybe the owner might even recharge their own cell phone as well... now there is an idea.

Cheers (Hamsters Rule.... OK!)

You'd have to make liberal use of mirrors and screen sharing to run even the smallest of color TFT displays.

It'd be cheaper to pipe in Wagner's Die Wulkure!

You could just hook the wheel to a flip book with pics of moving fields on it.

They should employ this to just store energy. For example, putting a large battery in it and discharging it into other low power accessories such as rechargable batteries.

It's probably financially inefficient, but so is everything.

I don't mind the fact that hamsters run and they are used to invent things (if it means the hamster is not hurt) what i don't agree with is some of the comments that have been posted... Everyone has a right to speak their own mind but having ago at someone for their views is nsty!

Great!, now there's going to be a Hamster feed shortage due to the popularity of these recharger's! Maybe I'll go and stock up on it now before the price goes up, or else I'll have to put my hamster on a diet!

haha! i don't actually know what any of you people are talking about with your watts and stuff but these messages are really funny to read! ps I have a hamster called Millie and she used to have an exercise wheel but she ate it. If i connected it to a mobile phone charger she would eat that too. i hope that allowing a hamster to consume her exercise wheel is not a form of animal cruelty

THAT IS STUPID! WHAT ARE THEY GUNNA CREATE HORSE POWERED PHONE CHARGERS NOW? COME ON! I BELIEVE THAT IT IS TOTAL ANIMAL CRUELTY! HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO RUN ON A WHEEL ALL DAY JUST SO YOUR STUPID PHONE COULD CHARGE? TO ME IT'S POINTLESS!

Water flows downstream to the ocean at its own will. Would it be cruel to hook it up to some turbines? It doesn't hurt the water. The hamster is going to run whether you hook it up to the charger or not. I don't see how that's cruel. Hamsters want to run, hamsters need to run. Might as well let them earn their keep.

And so what if one hamster creates little power. 0.9 volts is more energy than 0.9 volts. If it creates energy, use it. To create enough energy to make the hamsters useful, we could get ten or twenty of the little shits (male would be most desirable), and line them up. And when we want them to run, we can put a center fold of hamster playboy in front of the weel. They'll run until their legs fall of.

Why don't we put hamster wheels in the prisons? How many KW do you think a prison of 40,000 would produce? It would be good for the country and good for the prisoners; maybe they'll be a little faster next time and wouldn’t get caught.

And at least the prisoners will have something else in prison not to like. Something "healthy".