Inductive charging (also known as wireless charging) uses an electromagnetic field to transfer energy between two objects.
Wireless charging seems so great, I plug this thingy in and then set this other thingy on it… BAM power! But how the heck does electricity get from the wall into my phone? You’re probably reading this thing via a device that has a battery. Laptops, mobile phones, toothbrushes, though… not this new watch everyone’s talking about for some reason… All these things need charging and for the moment we’re still using cords and plugs for this… Inductive charging or wireless charging isn’t new, it’s been used since the early 1990s in electric toothbrushes, and for surgically implanted devices like artificial hearts.
In the late 1800s, Tesla was allegedly able to power light bulbs with no wires, and claimed to be able to transmit power from one location to another with no wires… To make it work relies on simple physics. If you ever wrapped a coil of wire around a nail and attached a battery, then you know the electricity in the battery runs through
the wire creating an electromagnetic field, or flux. Do it at home, it’s fun and you can use it to pick up paperclips or whatever.
Samsung-Edge-Plus-PCT – How Wireless charging Works or Inductive Charging
Wireless charging works on the principle of electromagnetic induction. Coils of wire in the base station (the charging plate) create a magnetic field as the current passes through. This field can induce an electrical current in an adjacent coil of wire without actually touching it. If this wire is part of a battery charging circuit, then you have wireless charging.
How Wireless charging Works or Inductive Charging
With that same principle, a coil of wire… magnet… battery… you can make it go the other way too. Spin a magnet in the coil and you’ll GENERATE electricity by taking that magnetic flux and moving it through that coil to create electricity. The battery creates a stable electromagnet because it’s direct current, it’s going one way. The power from your walls is alternating current, changes direction 60 times a second — or cycles at 60 hertz — so the electrons are moving back and forth — remember that because that’s the key to the charging. Wireless inductive charging gets its name from that magnetic field interaction, called induction. Inside of the charging pad, and the inductive charging device are tiny coils of wire. The pad, being plugged into the wall, is fully powered — and the power is cycling. When the other coils come within a short distance their flux will interact with the flux in the device, move the electrons around and charge the battery. Chances are, the number of cycles per second isn’t going to be 60 hertz, but like, 5 or
10, so it doesn’t mess up other things in your house. Your WiFi network cycles at 2.4 gigahertz or 2.4 billion cycles per second, so it’s DEFINITELY not going to mess THAT up, but with all the radio waves flying around, you can’t be too careful.
nexus6_feature – How Wireless charging Works or Inductive Charging
If it’s that easy, you’d think it would be everywhere, but the problem is efficiency. You waste a lot of power filling up two coils and letting them talk to each other. It’s SO much better to just plug right in. The future of wireless charging is unclear. It seems like a great idea, but it’s still going to be a short-distance system for a while. In 2006, MIT found if you match the frequencies of the devices, you can make the power go a few METERS — so if you were in your living room, and a charger was there — your phone would charge right in your pocket… They’re working on marketing the technology now, but it’s still not everywhere
