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Trains, now on Uber. I'm Shayla Farzan.

Bricks are one of the oldest known building materials dating back thousands of years,

but researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have found a new use for bricks

as energy storage units, A team of engineers and chemists have found a way to

transform an ordinary house brick into a pseudo battery, allowing it to conduct and store

electricity.

The bricks are powerful enough to illuminate an LED light bulb

and cost only about $3 to make.

I love the idea of adding value to things that are inexpensive, things that are affordable, things that we kind of take for granted.

Julio Darcy is an assistant professor of chemistry at Washington University and one of the researchers on the project.

The brick battery relies on the reddish pigment known as iron oxide or rust that gives red bricks

their color.

The scientists pumped the bricks with several gases that react with iron

oxide to produce a network of plastic fibers. These microscopic fibers

coat the empty spaces inside the bricks and conduct electricity.

What we're trying to do is we're trying to make specialized plastics that are only used in the

nanoscale where we use very little of the plastic and we can actually embed that plastic

inside construction materials that can store energy.

The study is in the journal Nature Communications.

In the future, Darcy says a brick wall could potentially serve a dual purpose,

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