system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is it possible to convert heat to electricity without going through the boiling water->turbine process?

Example when a nuclear reactor heats up, can that heat be converted to electricity without water->steam->Turbine? If so how does that work?
gpt
Yes, it's possible.  However, the water boiling approach is more economical.

One way to do it is with what essentially boils down to an oversized thermocouple.  You put one side next to something hot (say, your reactor) and the other side next to something cold (say, cooling water) and it produces a voltage.  

I've seen this mechanism used for a small toy-sized car used in a college competition.  They took liquid nitrogen for their cold source and had some chemical reaction that got very hot for their hot source.  With this they were able to make barely enough electricity to get the car to roll on smooth level ground.