Fifty-plus years on the planet have taught me important lessons about life that I would like to share with you today. 1. Eat vegetables. 2. Exercise regularly. 3. Always have batteries.
Among the legion of first-world frustrations that visit a typical person—OK, me—in a typical year, dead batteries are usually on the list. There I am, settled in for an episode of Game of Thrones, eagerly anticipating an hour of mischief and mayhem, when I realize that my TV remote is out of juice. I make a beeline for the "battery drawer" (doesn't every household have one?). Batteries of every shape and size stare back at me, except the one I need.
Or . . . it's early evening, I'm running late for a meet-up, I forgot to turn off Bluetooth a few hours ago and now my phone is as dead as a two-by-four. Common courtesy demands a text or phone call to alert my friend. Well, good luck finding a pay phone.
Or . . . I'm hiking on a rocky cliffside trail before daybreak and my headlamp goes dark. No spares. My choices include: 1) sitting uncomfortably on a rock in the chilly wind waiting for the sun to rise; 2) falling off the mountain.
Not that anything like that has ever happened to you, right?
The importance of batteries these days goes well beyond hazard avoidance or smartphone utility. I mean, we're operating cars on them now.
When you consider all the activities that rely on a device powered by anodes and cathodes playing tag, a well-charged battery is one of the keys to a pleasant day. (I still rely on small square 9-volts to keep my 1970s transistor radio delivering Giants play-by-play broadcasts.)
Happily, making better batteries is kind of a rage at the moment. Researchers are making headway toward big jumps in capacity, and one of the leaders is Stanford engineering professor Yi Cui. You can read about his work beginning on page 58.
Cui and his team were responsible for one of the biggest breakthroughs of recent years when they discovered a method that can extend lithium battery life up to tenfold. If harnessed and properly scaled, their discovery could lead to paradigm-shifting improvements. Electric cars could go hundreds of miles farther without a charge, for example. A tablet could run long enough to watch an entire season of Game of Thrones. Longer-lasting batteries also strike a blow for clean energy, which may ultimately be the best reason to pursue them.
Such research advances basic science, too. Cui and his team are pushing out the boundaries of chemistry by manipulating materials at the molecular level. All of this was science fiction not so long ago. Now nanotechnology heralds an entire new universe of possibilities.
If the advances taking place on the front edge of battery research trickle down to the consumer level, people like me will be the first to celebrate. I just checked—my battery drawer is empty.
Kevin Cool is the executive editor of Stanford.
