4, GIRLS from Harvard Invent a Soccer that Captures Energy with Every Kick.

... Oh.  My.  God.  This ad is more of an infomercial for the most amazing thing I've ever seen and I'm in love.  For every fifteen minuets of play a simple, round, soccer ball can power an LED light for up to three hours... THREE HOURS!!!  When  you couple this with the fact that 25% of the world's children do not have electricity, but nearly every one of them plays soccer... that's what I call seeing a problem and creating a solution.

The women created this ball as a renewable energy for children in developing countries. The ad from sOccet showcases an invention with revolutionary potential for the developing world; its tone matches the excitement and tremendous power of the simple idea it features. If you'll notice the splice-like nature of the shots, combined with jumps in segments works create the experience of an electrical short, meanwhile showcasing the ordinary, subtle product the entire time. Not to mention it was the brains of 4 women who put it together?!  Way to go ladies!

Article from Popular Mechanics:
The Soccer Ball That Makes Electricity During the Game


The Brilliant Idea: A soccer ball that can power an LED light, providing clean energy in developing countries.

BY LOGAN WARD AND THE EDITORS OF POPULAR MECHANICS

September 29, 2010 6:30 AM

Julia Silverman, Jessica Lin and Jessica Matthews

Photograph by Nick Ruechel

Small-scale, hand-cranked generators that power lights and radios are practical in places where there’s no electricity. But they’re not a whole lot of fun. Four undergraduate students at Harvard University decided to harvest the kinetic energy of soccer, the world’s most popular sport, instead. After just 15 minutes of play, their sOccket ball could provide families in sub-Saharan Africa—where less than 25 percent of the population has access to reliable electricity—with 3 hours of LED light, a clean, efficient alternative to kerosene lamps. 

The mechanics are straightforward: When the sOccket rolls, a magnetic slug slides back and forth inside an inductive coil in the ball, generating 

power that is stored in a capacitor. Field-tested in South Africa during the World Cup, sOccket 2.0 has an embedded DC jack and weighs only 5 ounces more than a FIFA-regulated ball. A future version should hold enough juice—3.7 volts at a capacity of 600 milliamps per hour—to charge a basic cellphone. The women partnered with a manufacturer in Cape Town and hope to subsidize developing-world discounts with sales in the U.S. 

Still want to know more about how it works? Check out one of the developers and see her story on where the ideas came from.  You may be surprised to learn none of them were engineers.