Stem in Current Events Information Technology

46

S T E M I N C U R R E N T E V E N T S

In the world of electric cars, Israeli company Phinergy, in associ- ationwith aluminummakerAlcoa Canada, has created an alumi- num-air battery that has powered an electric car for 1,100 miles, well above the current average. Fuji Pigment is also advancing aluminum-air batteries for cars, creating theAlfa battery with 40 times the capacity of a lithium-ion battery and boasting a unique charging device:water.When its batteries are topped off with any type of water, the battery can remain charged for up to 14 days. StoreDot, a company birthed at Tel Aviv University, is working on a charging process using amino acids to create biological semiconductors.When completed, the company thinks it might be able to charge an electric car battery in just three minutes. Data Storage Systems and the Cloud While many parts of smartphones and personal computers are engineering marvels, data storage systems are the key to con- necting modern-day devices. Before hard drives allowed you to store documents on your computer, for example, you’d have to print out anything you wanted to save.Advances in data storage technology have allowed for larger and larger storage systems at cheaper and cheaper prices, and they are far more portable to boot. It might be hard to imagine, but the world’s first giga- byte-sized hard drive, produced by IBM in 1980, was housed in a cabinet the size of a refrigerator, weighed nearly 550 pounds, and cost about $115,000 in today’s dollars! Today, of course, you can go to any consumer electronics store, plop down $90 or so and walk away with 2 or more terabytes of storage, all in the palm of your hand.Want even more portability? Thumb drives, so called because they are about the size of your thumb, can