Electric Flower Pot – Beyond the Ornamental Object

A recreation of students from Siem Reap in generating electricity 

without affecting the surrounding environment.

“Imagine...children in the rural area where there is not enough electricity. If they have a flower pot like this, which could light up their room without plugging. How delightful they would be!” said Sor Hokly, head of Science & Engineering Group from Siem Reap’s Hun Sen Wat Svay high school.

In school uniform as a twelfth-grader, Hokly was explaining the real purpose behind this flower pot production when he put himself into his own imagination of the rural children’s smile if they could eventually use this flower pot someday. This electric flower pot is his group’s latest project.

What makes this flower pot so special was because of its capability to generate electric power from soil without having to connect to any other sources of electricity. Besides that, according to Hokly, the derived power could also be used for multiple purposes.

Primarily, you can use this power to support electronic devices such as lamp to light up your room or temporary recharge your phone in case it completely runs out of energy, especially for smartphones.

This flower pot is also designed with entertainment function. There is a mini computer with one gigabyte of RAM (Random Access Memory), and sixteen gigabytes of space on hard disk drive, which is attached to the lower part of pot body and enables you to use email, social media or even watch a video on YouTube.

You may as well find the flower pot is equipped with mini speaker, and thermometer, which allows you to enjoy listening to music by connecting the speaker via your phone Bluetooth function while, at the same time, being aware of the temperature in the room where you are staying. 

“We designed this flower pot by considering on the luxurious aspect and emotion of the user...We want to make people feel relax and less tense after their stress and long working hour during the day time,” Hokly explained.

Science & Engineering Group’s early idea to produce this flower pot was initiated in 2015. This latest model is their 28th experiment since this pot was created. With multiple advantages, the group described this flower pot as a smart device, since anyone not only can use it as a room decoration but also an electric power generator.

Asked where the initial idea of creating this flower pot came from, Hokly revealed that it was inspired by his chemistry class back in grade ten, when he read an elder-version chemistry text book published by the Education Ministry.

“There is a section of that book, which was about generating electric power from the chemical substances, existing in fertilized soil,” he said, presenting how the idea of creating this flower pot was started.

Within this project, the group has spent at least three months working on it. The work is divided into three main stages – researching, gathering materials, producing and assembling parts of the pot.

A member from Science & Engineering Group, Young Sopheadara, who is responsible for mechanic and installation of the pot, said the body of the pot is made from coconut shell, which is cut into pieces, and glued together to create the shape of the pot.

“We thought about producing the pot body from wood...However, coconut shell is better since we considered it as a recyclable waste, which is easily found and also good for the environment”.

Dara added that the pot is able to produce limited volume of electricity from soil. That is why all the produced energy will be stored in a battery inside the pot. As soon as the battery is fully charged, the energy production will be ceased.

Soil, too, as the main component of this flower pot, had been studied in detail before the group decided to use a certain kind. For many times, the group had tested various sorts of soil before coming up with a decision to select the soil consisting of  “decomposing organic waste”, which is rich of electricity-producing chemical substances, according to Hing Kosal and Chuon Chen, other two members of the group.

Back to their purpose, the team created this flower pot in hope to be part of solution to global problems in the search for sustainable energy generated from soil. In addition, they also aim to contribute back to their society, especially to the families living in poverty, where parents are not able to afford the electricity for their kids to study at night. 

“Our dream...is to see everyone on earth have enough electricity to use without having to destroy the environment we are living in. If those kids could just light up their small room by just watering the plant in this small pot regularly, how big their smile would be...that was our initial optimism when creating this pot,” Hokly finally said.

The six members of Science & Engineering Group who created electric flower pot.
Photo: supplied

The process of preparing layers of soil into the pot.
Photo: AOMPUL/Som Panha

The group's study on the body, and other parts of the electric flower pot.
Photo: AOMPUL/Som Panha

 

by Som Panha