Article: Paper supercapacitor could power future paper electronics

(PhysOrg.com) — All those paper transistors and paper displays that scientists have been designing can now be powered by an onboard power source, thanks to the development of a new paper supercapacitor. Designed by researchers at Stanford University, the paper supercapacitor is made by simply printing carbon nanotubes onto a treated piece of paper. The researchers hope that the integrated design could lead to the development of low-cost, disposable paper electronics.

Very interesting and could lead to a lot of new and much more ubiquitous interactivity possibilities. Imagine, a circuit on your grocery bag.

M5 Bus assignment

For our Applications of Interactive Technology course, we were assigned to ride the M5 bus from Houston and LaGuardia Place to the end of the ride, around 185th St in Washington Heights, then write a 5-page essay about our experience. Well, I went on the ride, I took pictures, I took notes, and I thought about what interesting things to say.

In the end, I felt that I didn’t really have enough of any one thing to write about. So, I wrote three things: a descriptive essay on the trip, a reflective piece about my former living experience in Washington Heights, and a fictional essay about a highly phobic man on the bus.

At the same time I thought about how could I make the essay more engaging. Well, we could create any type of media we wanted. Another student turned in a book of photographs for her picture essay. Anything with film, sound or images would have required yet another bus trip, and 185th St is far away from Houston. But, I did like the idea of doing something unique with my essay.

I’m not exactly sure of where the idea came from, but the idea of putting my essay on cubes just seemed right. And, so I took about 2 days to create a set of 9 paper cubes. On three sides of each cube I pasted my essay, which I prepared first in Illustrator. On the reverse side for each cube I pasted clues, like colored pieces of paper or drawings of a flower growing petals. When you put it all together, there’s only one arrangement of the cubes that allows you to read the essay and also see the clues in the correct order. It turned out to be a lot more difficult for people to put together than I intended, but it seems like they really enjoyed trying to figure it out.

I also built a box to hold the cubes. Seemed appropriate since I needed a way to turn the cubes in without them getting crushed. Sadly, I think I deleted the photos of the box when I was in a mad fit of hard drive frugality. Well, it still exists (I hope), so photos will appear eventually.

The essay is here.(PDF)