Bright ideas changing lives

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South African children display the sOccket, a portable generator housed in a soccer ball, whose inventors include Winnetka native Julia C. Silverman. The invention snared Popular Mechanics' Next Generation Breakthrough Award.

Updated: November 28, 2010 5:07PM

In this age of technological sophistication, who would think that a seemingly mundane miter saw and soccer ball could win innovation awards-

The inventions, with Chicago-area roots, have won awards from Popular Mechanics magazine for their potential for creating transformation.

Julia C. Silverman, a Winnetka native, is one of four women who, as classmates at Harvard University, resolved an assignment by imagining a soccer ball that could generate electricity to power LED (light-emitting diode) lamps, and, in the future, potentially cell phones.

Their idea -- the sOccket, a combination of "soccer" and electrical "socket" -- started with putting a shake-to-charge flashlight inside of a soccer ball. The women rolled the ball and the flashlight lit up. A magnet inside had moved through a copper coil and created a charge.

"That was our first proof of concept," said Silverman, a research analyst at the World Bank who specializes in sustainable development in Africa, and who works as the programming director for sOccket.

The other three women are: Jessica Matthews, Jessica Lin and Hemali Thakkar. Matthews works at a New York City marketing agency, Mr. Youth; Lin is moving to South Africa, and Thakkar is finishing her senior year at Harvard, majoring in global health.

The latest version of sOccket has patent-pending technology: An internal mechanism that captures and stores the energy generated by the ball's movements. A DC jack sits flush with the ball's surface, so that a lamp or anything else that plugs into the jack can be charged by the insides of the energized soccer ball.

The aim is to provide the soccer ball and an LED lamp to as many as possible of the world's 2 billion people who have no regular electricity, and the other 1 billion who have intermittent access.

The women hope to start selling a prototype sOccket online soon. The idea is to sell the sOccket for full price in America and, with the proceeds, subsidize sales in poor countries.

"It is a portable generator that produces clean, off-grid electricity," Silverman said. "We decided to go with rugged technologies because they can literally be kicked, and because we're hoping that the sOccket can be assembled in developing communities. If we can give people three hours of clean light rather than kerosene to read or to cook, that's really significant."

A future sOccket could expand from the DC plug to include other types of plugs.

Popular Mechanics Science Editor Jennifer Bogo said the sOccket earned the "Next Generation Breakthrough" award because it's a fun way for people to play soccer and generate much-needed electricity while having fun.

"A child can kick the soccer ball, plug in an LED light and get three hours of light to do homework," Bogo said.

The breakthrough awards recognize inventions that show promise of "impacting the world long into the future," she said.

The other innovation is an axial-glide miter saw developed at Bosch Power Tools, a U.S. subsidiary of The Bosch Group based in Mount Prospect.

The miter saw is one of the year's "10 Most Transformative Products" because the company's engineers envisioned an entirely new way to make it work, and with more ease, according to Popular Mechanics. The Bosch engineers replaced the saw's rails with a series of hinges so that a pair of triple-jointed limbs on the 12-inch, dual-bevel saw articulate like scissor jacks, snapping into position to chop at an odd compound angle, the magazine explained.

Jason Feldner, the product manager of benchtop miter saws at Bosch, said the $799 saw solves problems that builders, do-it-yourselfers and others have with the rails of the old saw falling out of alignment.

"When the rails fall out of alignment, they can corrode, and that makes it hard to move the saw and push it forward," he said.

Feldner noted that Bosch, a not-for-profit company owned by a German charitable foundation with 550 employees here, is known for plowing money into design and research-and-development. Each year, the parent company spends more than $5 billion for research and development, and applies for 3,800 patents worldwide.

"This project has been under way for a number of years. It is a team effort," Feldner said.