A Thermal Camera Reveals the Secret of the Drinking Bird Desk Toy. A closer look at exactly how the popular desk toy operates. By Avery Thompson Published: Dec 08, 2016 12:29 PM EST.

The drinking bird is an iconic desk toy, right up there with Newton's Cradle, but can you explain how it works? The principle is unintuitive at first glance, but beautifully simple in hindsight ...

The kitschy desk ornament's mechanism confounded Albert Einstein. ... If you're familiar with the drinking bird toy, you know it as a cheesy knickknack that's adorned office desktops for decades.

A commercially available drinking bird toy – the generator version definitely has a few more bits and bobs added Frank Vincentz/C.C. 3.0 View 2 Images ...

Although it looked in some ways like a toy, students learned that the "drinking bird" was actually a simplified heat engine. The apparatus was relying on gravity shifts and a series of ...

At some point in your life you’ve almost certainly marveled at the classic drinking bird toy, and probably lost a few brain cells trying to figure out how it works. Don’t be ashamed if you ...

In this case the surfaces were fixed to the pivoting bird and the stationary stand. The big challenge for the researchers was to minimize the friction at the interface, while still generating ...

The retro “drinking bird” is making a surprising comeback — as the inspiration for a clean-energy generator that could one day power your watch and phone.

Inspired by the classic drinking bird toy, scientists have developed an engine that efficiently converts energy from water evaporation into electricity to power small electronics. The device ...

There are a few ways to harvest 10μW from the environment but, perhaps, none so much fun as a generator based on a ‘drinking bird’ toy built by researchers in China. Dubbed a DB-THG (drinking-bird ...

The new method works by converting the energy produced by the bird’s characteristic back-and-forth movement into electrical power. The physics behind it are relatively simple: The toy is made up ...

The retro “drinking bird” is making a surprising comeback — as the inspiration for a clean-energy generator that could one day power your watch and phone.