Jump for Juice: Healthy, Human-Powered Battery Charger

We’re big fans of multi-tasking items, especially when they improve the world in some way. This great design from Jooyong Kim and Sungkyung Kim helps you power your gadgets with green power while improving your physical health. It’s essentially a jump rope that can charge rechargeable batteries in its handles, and it’s powered by your own energetic motion.

The design itself is relatively simple: just unscrew the caps of the jump rope’s handles, insert rechargeable batteries, and re-cap the handles. Then start jumping. The motion of the rope provides enough electricity to charge the batteries and to power the small display on each handle. The display can tell you how many revolutions of the rope you’ve completed, how long you’ve been jumping, how much of a charge the rechargeable batteries have accumulated, and even an estimated amount of calories burned.

When you’re done with your workout, you just take the batteries out and plug them into your bathroom radio so you can have a nice, long, hot bath to relax. If you have a lot of gadgets to keep powered up, this might be the best fitness/weight loss strategy ever invented. We’re thinking it would also be a great way to trick kids into being active while teaching them that their gadgets (and the power they consume) come at a cost.

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See more in or under Various Gizmos. February, 2010.