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For years people have seen totally transparent hand held devices in sci-fi movies, and although they look super cool, I never personally wondered how they would be powered.  My good friend Anna Novikov has a thing for a particular translucent cell phone I featured on the blog a while back, and the technology in this post is exactly what was supposed to power that concept. Researchers at Stanford University have just created a thin, flexible, totally transparent lithium-ion battery. It is about the size and shape of a Listerine breath mint strip, and as clear as Saran Wrap.  According to an article on the university’ website, researchers were inspired to make a see-through battery partially because they want transparent Apple products to be a reality in the future.  The challenge of making a battery see-through is that certain key materials that make a battery work are fundamentally not transparent, and no good transparent substitutes could be found. The Stanford scientists found a way around the hurdle by making the non-transparent parts of the battery so small that they cannot be seen with the naked eye.