Okay, enough ultra theoretical quantum physics. I'm wondering if anybody has heard/knows of a device that generates electricity from the excess heat generated in your average internal combustion engine. After all, we all know that some ridiculously high amount of the energy contained in gasoline gets wasted in the form of heat, and this heat goes from the engine block, through the cooling system, and right out the radiator. I would think capturing and harnessing this heat wouldn't be rocket science.

I mean, what are our possibilities here? Boil water to spin turbines to power electric motors in a hybrid car, then re-condense the water to be boiled again? I'm just spewing, I can't talk about stuff like this with anybody I know. Has this been done?

I was sitting in the library today reading Popular Mechanics and I skimmed by something talking about this. Check this issue out? I don't remember if it was anything significant .. I skipped over it, but it did mention this topic.

There's been some talk of using Stirling engines to do that; though the weight they would add to the car vs. the amount of energy they would recapture hardly makes it worth it, I think.

Piezoelectric crystals (materials that 'harvest' sound/vibrations and give an electric charge) might have some use in cars as well - instead of recapturing energy lost as heat, capturing the sound and vibrations created by the engine and the road. They're already used in things like microphones, electric lighters, and some dance clubs even have them built into the floor to generate power from a dancing crowd. Some scientists recently found that using piezoelectrics of specific size (~20 nanometers) can generate almost three times more electricity than previously thought. Here's the article:

http://www.redorbit.com/news/technology/1604066/scientists_pave_way_for_nanoscale_selfpowered_devices/

I've seen that before, but I didn't realize how versatile it was. I saw it being applied to sidewalks to produce energy for streetlights, but it sounds like there have been some advancements since I saw a special on TV about it. That's really cool.