Indian engineering students make helmet that charges mobiles

Ahmedabad: Two Ahmedabad students, Pragnesh Dudhaiya and Aalok Bhatt of Nirma University, have designed a helmet that doubles up as a mobile phone charger. This helmet charges a mobile in 40 minutes by using solar and wind energy, reports Shraddha Singh of Bangalore Mirror.

Dudhaiya and Bhatt who are final-year students of electrical engineering are planning to file a patent for their innovation. This is an attempt by the students to bring down the number of accidents caused due to people not using helmets while driving. "The number of accidents in the city is on the rise. Two-wheeler drivers who don't wear protective head gear face a greater risk," says Pragnesh.

Three days is all that the students took to create this new generation helmet. "We designed it when our college was hosting a 'green fest'," Pragnesh said. Emphasizing on energy saving using this helmet, he says that during daytime, the helmet would use solar energy to charge a cellphone attached to it, while in the night, it would use wind energy. "It will cost Rs. 1,000, a small price to pay for safety as well as convenience," he added.

PERSONALITY OF WEEK

Stephen Hawking

Stephen William Hawking, CH, CBE, FRS, FRSA (born 8 January 1942) is a British theoretical physicist, whose scientific career spans over forty years. His books and public appearances have made him an academic celebrity and he is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a lifetime member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences,and in 2009 was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.

Hawking was the Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge for thirty years, taking up the post in 1979 and retiring on 1 October 2009.He is also a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and a Distinguished Research Chair at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario. He is known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, especially in the context of black holes. He has also achieved success with works of popular science in which he discusses his own theories and cosmology in general; these include the runaway best seller A Brief History of Time, which stayed on the British Sunday Times bestsellers list for a record-breaking 237 weeks.

Hawking's key scientific works to date have included providing, with Roger Penrose, theorems regarding singularities in the framework of general relativity, and the theoretical prediction that black holes should emit radiation, which is today known as Hawking radiation (or sometimes as Bekenstein-Hawking radiation).

Hawking has a neuro-muscular dystrophy that is related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a condition that has progressed over the years and has left him almost completely paralysed.