Welcome to the Kotkeye Ride Home for Friday, September 3rd, 2021. I'm Jackson Bird today. What if a room could charge all of your devices just by them being in there? Like no wires, no charging pads, just being in the room. Some engineers

have made that a reality. Plus, new insights into the billion years of time that are missing

from the rock layers in the Grand Canyon. And why red delicious apples are so common in the U.S. even though they're not really that great.

Here are some of the cool things from the news today.

A room that wirelessly charges all of your devices just by them being in there.

Amazingly convenient? Too good to be true? Pointless. Dangerous.

The jury is still out on public reception, but engineers from the University of Tokyo have built

a prototype that transmits energy to electronic devices without the need for plugs or batteries.

And we're not just talking about laptops and tablets, but even home appliances.

Quoting Scientific American,

the room relies on the same phenomenon as short-range wireless phone chargers.

A metal coil placed in a magnetic field will produce an electric current.

Existing commercial charging docks use electricity from a wall outlet to produce a magnetic field

in a small area.

Most recent smartphones are equipped with a metal coil, and when such a model is placed on

the dock, the interaction generates enough current to power the phone's battery.

But today's commercial products have a very limited range.

If you lift a phone off the dock or swathe it in a case that is too thick, the wireless power transfer ceases. But if a magnetic field

filled a whole room, any phone within it would have access to wireless power. End quote.

And here's how the University of Tokyo team did it, quoting Australia's ABC News.

They first built a 3 by 3 by 2 meter room with floor, ceiling, and walls made of aluminum,

sheet metal housing capacitors. The capacitors transmitted an electric current through the floor,

...