Raindrops, diapers and Welch’s grape juice

We draw energy from oil, water, wind and sunshine, so who’s to say we couldn’t add raindrops, diapers and grape juice to the energy mix too?

In a recent article in Mother Jones this man does: Jamie Hyneman of the Discovery Channel’s popular debunking show, Mythbusters.

In the article, Hyneman takes on a variety of recent too-good-to-be-true, low or zero-emission energy sources like plastic sheets capable of converting the force of a raindrop into electricity (debunked: Hyneman points out that the force of rivers makes raindrops pretty insignificant by comparison); a diaper-derived biofuel (debunked: Hyneman notes the difficulty of separating one kind of garbage from landfills, which are already sources of power); and even Welch’s grape juice (plausible: no surprise, given that sugar cane is already used as a viable source material for ethanol production).

In fairness, turning diapers into diesel isn’t any more fantastical than turning trash into jet fuel, and in the continued search for alternative power sources, our source materials are only about to get weirder.