Can Your Bra Power Your iPod?

Writer wants to put her breasts to work
By Laurel Jorgensen,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 25, 2008 9:28 AM CDT
Can Your Bra Power Your iPod?
A model displays a "solar-power generator bra" during a press unveiling in Tokyo last month. The bras generate electric power through a detachable solar panel.   (AP Photo/Katsumi Kasahara)

For all the embarrassing bouncing and awkward jiggling they do, there must be a way to capture the power of breast motion, Adrienne So writes in Slate. “Human-powered devices are showing up everywhere. … Could someone design an iPod-powering bra for me?” she asks. A sports bra design consultant tells her she’d need the right breast size and material to maximize the breast motion.

A Georgia Tech professor working on energy-generating T-shirts thinks it’s doable (but possibly not washable), and another professor has a different idea that might work but “probably wouldn’t be very comfortable.” But So isn’t discouraged: “If someone were to engineer a kinetically powered bra … I’d be intrigued–and I might just start looking at my breasts in a different light.” (More alternative energy stories.)

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