Canadian teen invents flashlight powered by body heat

Batteries may be passe' when it comes to powering flashlights thanks to the invention of a 15-year-old girl from Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.

Ann Makosinski who built a flashlight for $26, which has also won her a slot as one of the finalists in Google's Science Fair, according to ExtremeTech, says the cost could be brought down if mass produced.

As a finalist in the Google Science Fair which would hand out its awards in September, she would also earn a grand prize of $50,000 and a trip to the Galapagos Islands.

The flashlight is powered by Peltier tiles, which produce electricity when one side of the tile is heated while the other side is cooled.

Her flashlight incorporates an aluminium tube slipped inside a PVC pipe, having a cutaway that allows a person's had to touch the built-in Peltier tiles.

According to Extremetech, due to the temperature reliance of Peltier tiles, the flashlights worked better in colder temperatures (tested at 41 degrees Fahrenheit) and while it still worked in warmer temperatures (50 degrees, for instance), the colder the surrounding temperature, the more the hand's body heat could help the Peltier generate electricity.

It added the flashlight was able to maintain a sufficient level of light for over 20 minutes, "definitely enough time to find the candles in the dark when the power goes out."

Meanwhile, the 18 finalists for Google's 2013 Science Fair come from eight countries, including Canada, Russia, Singapore, India, Greece, Australia, and Turkey.

The 18 have made the cut from among thousands from over 120 countries, Google said, and represent 15 projects. Nine of the finalists are girls. All of the students would present their projects at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California, on 23 September.

The following is a brief overview of the 15 teams and their projects, in fields ranging from health, ecology, prosthetics, and programming.

Alex Spiride (USA): Squid-Jet: Bioinspired Propulsion System for Underwater Vehicles

Venkat Sankar (USA): Ecology or Economy: Managing the Impact of Infrastructure Projects on Endangered Species

 Kavita Selva (USA): Superconductor Tapes: A Solution to the Rare Earth Shortage Crisis

Liza Sosnova and Tina Kabir (Russia): Lyytinen - Universal hydrostatic densitometer

Viney Kumar (Australia): The PART (Police and Ambulances Regulating Traffic) Program

Elif Bilgin (Turkey): Going Bananas! Using Banana Peels in the Production of Bioplastic as a Replacement of the Traditional Petroleum Based Plastic

Ann Makosinski (Canada): The Hollow Flashlight

Yi Xi Kang, Kwok Ling Yi, and Tricia Lim (Singapore): Efficacy of Estrogens and Progesterone in Hepatic Fibrosuppression

Ding (USA): Rapid Quantum Dot Solar Cell Optimization: Integrating Quantum Mechanical Modeling and Novel Solar Absorption Algorithm

Shrishti Asthana (India): Solar Light Assisted nanoZnO Photo Catalytic Mineralization - The Green Technique for the Degradation of Detergents

Charalampos Ioannou (Greece): An Exoskeleton Glove which Enhances and Supports the Movement of the Human Palm

Esha Maiti (USA): Stochastic Monte Carlo Simulations to Determine Breast Cancer Metastasis Rates from Patient Survival Data

Elizabeth Zhao (USA): A Novel Implementation of Image Processing and Machine Learning for Early Diagnosis of Melanoma

Eric Chen (USA): Computer-aided Discovery of Novel Influenza Endonuclease Inhibitors to Combat Flu Pandemic

Vinay Iyengar (USA): Efficient Characteristic 3 Galois Field Operations for Elliptic Curve Cryptographic Applications

Elif Bilgin, who created a way to make bioplastic from banana peels, has been awarded $50,000 and and a year's worth of mentoring from Scientific American, which would help her developer her project, Google has announced.

In August, Google will allow public voting to help selectthe winners of the ''Inspired Idea Award'' on the Google Science Fair website. The voting will be open throughout the month.