Laptop in the jungle

[hypervelocity]

Hi everyone! Hope everything is going great!

I woke up today reflecting on a dream I had last night - I dreamt I was alone in the jungle, only to find out my only possession was my personal laptop. Of course the battery was depleted, and inside my hardrive were the coordinates to find my saviours.

So my question would be how would one go about recharging a laptop battery with elements only found in nature. Let's say for simplicity sake that I do have some wires with me and the only thing I need to figure out is how to create an electric charge flow to charge the battery.

If I may, I would actually like to solve 2 scenarios, the first one being that I only need a few minutes worth of battery time to quickly check something in the computer, and the second one relating to a more long term stay in the jungle in which I need to use the computer regularly, hence I need to be able to fully charge the battery.

Let's get those inner McGyver's out with suggestions!

[p1t1o]

Reminds me of a question I was asked in some team-building at a job once. It was "Which 3 items would you take if you were going to be marooned on a desert island?"

I was like "A knife, a large sheet of plastic and a mirror".

However, I was the only R&D staff member in a room full of marketeers. Every. Single. Other. Answer. Was something along the lines of "I would take my ipod, my cat and my hair straighteners."

One girl did say "A satellite phone" though, which had me kicking myself...

 

Anyhoo, I saw this a while back:

http://www.cultofmac.com/441175/guy-turns-plastic-bottles-into-hydro-electric-iphone-charger/

 

If you are absolutely stellar at electrochemistry (and possibly botany?), you might be able to create a battery, or battery charger, by making some electrolyte solutions (think lemon battery), but you'd need the appropriate metallic electrodes...

 

[Diche Bach]

Stranded in the jungle? I'd take a rock hammer (you can make any stone tool with that). The sheet of plastic would be nice, and the mirror could have some uses.But the mirror depends on sunlight and the plastic would only last so long.

Just me and my rock hammer: as long as I could figure out the local edibles and avoid local predators long enough, I could stay indefinitely I reckon

A good solid Meso-American style machete would be my second choice, there is a lot of overlap in the two tools but many things that would require fashioning additional tools from the hammer could be done with relative easy with the machete and making stone choppers/axes/knives is pretty difficult (not to mention there may be no useable chert findable with relative easy, so the machete would a definite plus.

Third would be a metal canteen in the 750ml ballpark that can double as a cook pot and water vessel. Again, something that "could be" fashioned out of local materials, but having it would make the first few days SOOO much easier.

[Camacha]

35 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

However, I was the only R&D staff member in a room full of marketeers. Every. Single. Other. Answer. Was something along the lines of "I would take my ipod, my cat and my hair straighteners.
 

Please tell me the next company outing was a hike where people were marooned in nature and left to fend for themselves. Please?

[Nibb31]

After watching The Island (real TV show), I think I'd go with a Leatherman or a swiss knife, a Zippo lighter, and a mosquito net.

 

[DerekL1963]

3 hours ago, hypervelocity said:

I woke up today reflecting on a dream I had last night - I dreamt I was alone in the jungle, only to find out my only possession was my personal laptop. Of course the battery was depleted, and inside my hardrive were the coordinates to find my saviours.

So my question would be how would one go about recharging a laptop battery with elements only found in nature. Let's say for simplicity sake that I do have some wires with me and the only thing I need to figure out is how to create an electric charge flow to charge the battery.

If I may, I would actually like to solve 2 scenarios, the first one being that I only need a few minutes worth of battery time to quickly check something in the computer, and the second one relating to a more long term stay in the jungle in which I need to use the computer regularly, hence I need to be able to fully charge the battery.

Let's get those inner McGyver's out with suggestions!

If you're planning on using the coordinates stored on the laptop to find safety...  How are you going to navigate from where you are (heck, how are you going to find where you are?) to safety?  You're going to need more than just a quick (temporary) recharge to "quickly check something".

That being said, I'd carry at least a sat phone and my trusty 60CSx handheld GPS if I were headed out into the jungle.

[magnemoe]

One guy had an hunting cabin up in the mountains, no electricity but he had an 300kV transfer line over part of his land. He build an coil out of wire who gave him 220 V in his cabin. 
Now this worked well for some years until the electricity company looked over the line and found this huge coil, it was the size of an buss. 
Case then to court, and he lost with an interesting note in that if the coil predated the power line it would be legal, Note that he would be better off paying the company of, even allowing them to put in an meter, however the company might well be amazing persons too. 

[Scotius]

A rugged knife with a solid blade. A good sized piece of flint. And some rope.

[kerbiloid]

4 hours ago, p1t1o said:

One girl did say "A satellite phone"

The correct answer. Six hours later she will be found by a rescue helicopter, while others will be still trying to make a fire with a hourglass.
Also, she still has two slots for her personal things: say, a mirror and a file to spend the time while they are flying.

 

5 hours ago, hypervelocity said:

how would one go about recharging a laptop battery with elements only found in nature

Catch a cat and carefully rub it against the laptop. Then feed the cat and let it out.
Cat's fur is a natural source of electricity, every IT knows this.

As a jungle laptop MacBook is the best choice. With its aluminium case you can crash the skulls of aggressive and/or edible beings. Also you can use it as a frying pan.

Coordinates.
Do you really need to know your coordinates in jungle, where you in any case can walk only along the rivers or other natural curves?

[hypervelocity]

thanks everyone for the responses, specially @p1t1o who sticked to the OP and tried to solve my query

the coordinates and dream thing were to give context or story, I saw someone who asked me how would I navigate in the jungle... that is irrelevant, all I wanted to know was how could one charge a current laptop battery with elements found in nature...

Edited September 7, 2016 by hypervelocity

[Streetwind]

Obtaining metal is pretty much a prerequisite to do anything electrical worth writing home about. It is, of course, perfectly possible to build up from nothing to the point of being able to refine and shape your own metal. But that still comes with the prerequisite of actually having the ore available to you (and the knowledge to recognize it for what it is).

Alternatively, if you had a few meters of copper wire for some strange reason, and were able to find some natural magnets, you could make a hand-cranked generator... which unfortunately outputs AC power, unless you also manage to build a commutator. All from memory of course.

[YNM]

Making a volta cell maybe ? I don't know. Making the conductors would be the hardest one.