Battery power at the tip of your tongue

(Credit: Flickr user tomblois)

As kids, some people (none of us here at Crave, of course) licked batteries to experience a little jolt. Turns out that old pastime could now have a practical application--producing battery power. A Japanese inventor is developing a battery, made mainly of carbon-based compounds, that's activated by a single drop of water. Susumu Suzuki describes his device in a video interview with Reuters.

This eco-friendly energy source--which has an electric current as powerful as that of a standard manganese dioxide battery, its creator says--would be cheap to produce and could be recycled several times. Most notably, it could potentially be useful for fueling low-power gadgets in emergency situations. "For example, when you get lost on a mountain, by just licking (the battery's) surface, you can get electricity for a flashlight or a radio," according to Suzuki. "This will be an essential tool in the near future."