Google is offering a million dollars if you can create a power inverter that is smaller than a laptop. If you don’t know what an inverter is, the competition probably isn’t up your alley, but basically it means that Google is hoping to change the future of electricity. Current power inverters – the boxes that change direct current into alternating current in homes, businesses and cars – are the size of a picnic cooler, limiting what they can be used for, so a smaller, lighter inverter could change power as we know it (and make one lucky person a million dollars richer).