Chin-Powered Energy Is Now Possible, Say Scientists

Can’t you just see the infomercial?

“Darn it, that hearing-aid battery went out again!”

“Never happens to me, Fred. Because I have this.” (Pulls out strap, buckles around top of head and under chin. Pops a stick of gum in mouth. Starts chewing.) “Yep, I have all the power I need, right here.” (Points to chin. Fred looks on with a mix of awe and envy.)

It sounds like an Onion piece but it’s real—and it’s really, really peculiar. A new report in the journal Smart Materials and Structures lays it out: engineers at Montreal’s École de Technologie Supérieure have created a prototype of the energy-generating chin strap and proven that it works in the lab, putting out 18 microwatts of electricity.

“Given that the average power available from chewing is around seven milliwatts, we still have a long way to go before we perfect the performance of the device,” writes study co-author Aidin Delnavaz, in a press release—which is a bit of an understatement, since that would be about a thousandfold increase in performance.

The technology behind the chinstrap power source isn’t new, mind you: it involves piezoelectric materials, which generate electricity simply by being squeezed or flexed. They’ve been used to create energy-producing kneepads (“not that pleasant” to wear, says its inventor) and boots (not that fashionable).

But the chinstrap is evidently the new state of the art. Once the engineers get the kinks out, which could take a few years, it could become commercially available, at which point, said Delnavaz, “the device could substantially decrease the environmental impact of batteries and bring more comfort to users.”

This depends on your definition of “comfort,” though. If you think strapping a contraption around your head every time you sit down to dinner and chewing against resistance is likely to be comfortable, either physically or socially, this item is for you.