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Fungi have assisted researchers to make progress in changing wood into a valuable source of good electricity, which could one day result in energy ballrooms .
The possibility of applying force to wood in order to produce an electric charge, which is named the piezoelectric effect, has been talked about since the 1940s and 1950s. Meanwhile, the fadingly little amount of electricity the process makes has held back the idea.
(Photo : Skitterphoto)
Rotten White Fungus
A group under the leadership of Ingo Burgert at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, has found how to twist the internal system of balsa wood to create the piezoelectric effect 55 times higher. The answer was to purposely rot the wood.