crowd farming: footstep power

James Graham, who, with fellow MIT graduate student Thaddeus Jusczyk, is helping to develop the growing field of "crowd farming."

They figure that the stomp of every footfall gives off enough power to light two 60-watt bulbs for one second.

Over the past few years there’s been a boom in technology that harnesses piezoelectricity — the science of drawing power from mechanical stress, including motion.