Power From the People. Now just walking may become an energy source.

Call me a girly man, but I’m not much into stuff like physics and engineering. Where’s the human interest? What’s in it for me? Will the alleged curvature of time let me steer around death? Will the first law of thermodynamics — which states that the total energy of a system and its surroundings is always conserved — stop me from getting tired at the end of the day?

Show me something remarkable, though — something that’s only happening because of some clever combination of physics and engineering — and I might start to pay attention. I had one of my rare "Wow! Physics and engineering are great!" moments last week when I looked at a photograph of a man in Shibuya, Tokyo, walking through a subway turnstile while a small lamp glowed alongside.

By Momus

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