Electricity from Noise?
Have you ever experienced a stadium so loud that the concrete shakes? Gyeongyun Lily Min, a high school senior from Lake Charles, Louisiana, was inspired by Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. to explore how this noise could be converted into electricity.
The film features monsters who power their world by harnessing children’s screams. Gyeongyun was intrigued by the idea of converting sound into usable energy and wondered if the noise in sports arenas could be used to generate electricity.
Her approach uses the piezoelectric effect, where certain materials generate electricity under pressure. This principle has been used in applications like electricity-generating roads and cochlear implants. In 2021, Jeremiah Thoronka was recognized for creating a piezoelectric machine that generates electricity from vehicles passing over roads, powering 150 homes without relying on weather or external power sources.
Gyeongyun’s idea was to harness soundwaves rather than direct kinetic force. She built a 22 by 12-inch model of an NBA arena and tested various placements of her harvester modules using sounds at 70 and 100 decibels. Although the results were limited due to the quality of the equipment—producing electricity in milliwatts rather than watts—she believes that with better equipment and on a larger scale, it could significantly reduce energy consumption in sports arenas.
Gyeongyun suggests that this technology could also be applied in urban environments. “In cities with heavy traffic, constant noise could be used to generate electricity for city infrastructure,” she told Smithsonian Magazine. “Manufacturing plants with continuous machinery noise could also use piezoelectric devices to capture sound vibrations and improve sustainability.”