Whenever you have fish to eat, you probably don't eat the skin because it's scaly. On the other hand, physicists may have finally found a use for all that scaly fish skin that often goes to waste.
According to their research, fish scales are made up of collagen, a type of piezoelectric material that you can use to achieve an electric charge whenever a mechanical stress is applied to it. This means that fish scales could be used some day as a type of way to generate power.
These kinds of mechanical stresses include tapping, squeezing, slapping, or any other kind of physical contact that otherwise distorts its normal shape and size.
More interestingly, the researchers were able to make the fish scales both transparent and flexible, meaning they could be used for a wide range of uses due to being biodegradable.
Since the fish scales were collected from a plant where the skins were already removed from the fish to produce food, to additional animals were harmed as a result of this research.
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JAN 09, 2017