Better Battery Gauge
Your laptop’s battery gauge says you have an hour of computing time left, but don’t count on it. The older a lithium-ion laptop battery, the less energy it can typically store – a variation that can throw off the accuracy of conventional battery gauges by more than 50 percent. This winter, Texas Instruments plans to introduce an inexpensive “gas gauge” chip that not only takes into account a battery’s original capacity but also measures its impedance – the resistance to electrical current caused by age, frequent use, and other factors. Built into the chip are mathematical models of lithium-ion chemistry that use impedance measurements to calculate how much a battery has degraded and adjust predictions of remaining charge accordingly.
Keep Reading
Most Popular
This startup wants to copy you into an embryo for organ harvesting
With plans to create realistic synthetic embryos, grown in jars, Renewal Bio is on a journey to the horizon of science and ethics.
VR is as good as psychedelics at helping people reach transcendence
On key metrics, a VR experience elicited a response indistinguishable from subjects who took medium doses of LSD or magic mushrooms.
This artist is dominating AI-generated art. And he’s not happy about it.
Greg Rutkowski is a more popular prompt than Picasso.
This nanoparticle could be the key to a universal covid vaccine
Ending the covid pandemic might well require a vaccine that protects against any new strains. Researchers may have found a strategy that will work.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.