Right on Tom. We played around with Peltier devices in Electronics lab a long time ago, and found that they were better suited to removing heat than in making juice. Apparently so did the market, as shortly after that we started seeing thermoelectric coolers using a bank of semiconductors as the heat sink. Those seem to have a modest yet consistent following still.

You can get the peltier effect by simply stacking pennies and nickels together, welding a wire onto each end of the stack, and heating the stack up. Each layer will produce about .25 volts at a very low current (maybe a few milliamps). Basically, any two dissimilar metals form a semiconductor of sorts (I believe that is called a Shotkey(sp) junction) that should generate the same effect.

The problem is, how long to pennies and nickels last when exposed to flames?