Red bricks, one of the world's most abundant and cheapest building materials, can be converted into batteries that can be charged to hold electricity, according to new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

If their "smart brick" concept is truly scalable, we might have whole new meanings for the concept of a self-sustainable home and a bricked battery.

The researchers behind the concept published their proof-of-concept on August 11 in Nature Communications, in which they showed a brick directly powering a green LED light (picture above).