The sOccket is a soccer ball that captures and stores energy while being played. It was developed by four students from Harvard, as a project. They tried to connect two observations they had: (1) kids all over the world are playing soccer and (2) many kids in the undeveloped world don’t have electricity at home. They connected the two observations into one product, the sOccket. Jessica Lin, co-creator of the sOccket, explains that it works more or less with the same principal as one of those “shake to charge” flashlights, “where a magnet rolls through a coil creating an electric charge.”After some field testing in South Africa and Kenya, they improved the mechanism to be more robust, and they expect to roll the product in summer/fall 2011.
On one hand, they plan to donate millions of sOcckets to kids in the undeveloped world (through the Uncharted Play organization, which is ran by the same students), as part of the ‘FUN can be FUNctional’ slogan. On the other hand, the sOccket can be useful for the developed world as well: your cellphone battery died on you, play 15 minutes with the sOccket and then charge the phone. And why only soccer ball, how about basketballs and other accessories. For more details and updates you can check the sOccket blog page.
