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They say some children are born prodigies, and when it comes to Ann Makosinski, the statement holds true. As a teenager living in Canada, her friend living in the Philippines told her that she couldn't study at night since her family couldn't afford electricity to turn the lights on.
Soon she wondered if there was a way to have light without traditional electricity. This is when she came up with a record-making invention, a flashlight powered by body heat.Like other children her age, Makosinski did not watch television or play video games. She spent her time listening to the opera, watching silent movies and learning to play the piano and violin. Interestingly, her first toy was a box of transistors.
“I wasn’t given many toys, so I had to make my own,” she said to CNN back in 2019. “I would take garbage and my hot glue gun from around the house and piece together these so-called inventions, and obviously they never worked, but the idea of taking things from around me and piecing them together to make something better just kind of came really naturally.
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A new kind of light
Makosinski was only 15 when she invented a flashlight that was powered by the heat of the user's hands.
The Hollow Flashlight uses thermoelectric technology to convert the temperature difference between the user's hand and the surrounding air into electricity. The device uses Peltier tiles, which generate electricity when one side is heated by the palm of the hand and the other is cooled.No batteries are required, with the flashlight running entirely on human body heat that would otherwise go to waste. School students, therefore, could study without worrying about running out of battery power.The Hollow Flashlight earned Makosinski a win in the 15-16 age category at the 2013 Google Science Fair and won at the 2014 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Her wins made her an international media sensation. She made appearances on shows such as 'The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon' and was featured in publications such as TIME and Forbes. She even gave a TEDxTeen Talk titled 'Why I don't use a smartphone'.
Makosinski only bought her first phone, an old-fashioned flip model, at the age of 18.
eDrink: A mug that generates electricity
The intrigued teenager did not stop there. Soon, she launched her next major invention, the eDrink. At 18, while enrolled at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, she designed a coffee mug to capture the excess heat from a hot beverage and convert it into electricity. This excess energy could then be used to provide a small charge to a phone or other device for 30 minutes.
It uses Peltier tiles (thermoelectric generators), and by heating one side of the tiles with your drink and cooling the other side with the design of the mug (and a bunch of electronic circuits, of course), electricity is produced."I got the inspiration for my project when I noticed that my high school friends were always complaining about their phones dying too soon and that their coffee was too hot to drink," she told Society for Science.
Toys with renewable energy
Now 29, Makosinski is looking to inspire other young girls across the world to use their minds and creativity in a similar fashion. Her interest in thermoelectric technology has led her toward a different kind of invention: toys designed to teach children about renewable energy.She has created bright-coloured toys that help kids learn about renewable energy in exciting ways. They can see and play with it as it lights up, spins or makes sound when powered by sunlight, water or a hand-wound mechanism.The goal now, she told CNN, is to have other youngsters, girls in particular, follow her into the world of science.“I just want, especially young kids, to feel like they can invent their own solutions and they don’t have to wait for other people to make them,” said Makosinski, who described herself as “a normal girl who just used her time differently after school.”“I want to inspire people to be more creative with the resources they have around them,” she added.
