13-Year-Old Boy Improves Solar Panel Efficiency 50%
13-Year-Old Boy Improves Solar Panel Efficiency 50%
"The only problem is that most solar panel arrays aren't exactly the most efficient replacements for electricity due to their need for the perfect positioning and good weather."
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Boy-Solar-Energy-Efficiency,news-12247.html
Now if only Parallax would design a tree stand for some solar panels.....
"The only problem is that most solar panel arrays aren't exactly the most efficient replacements for electricity due to their need for the perfect positioning and good weather."
He created a tree-like stand for solar panels and attached them in a Fibonacci-like manner and compared the results with a standard flat solar panel array. His simple creation yielded an incredible 50 percent jump in efficiency between the traditional method and the Fibonacci design.
http://www.tomsguide.com/us/Boy-Solar-Energy-Efficiency,news-12247.html
Now if only Parallax would design a tree stand for some solar panels.....
Comments
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/thinking-tech/why-13-year-olds-solar-power-8216breakthrough-wont-work/8261
Pretty good try for a 13 years old. The first of many small stumbles before an astonishing success?
http://www.eco-scams.com/archives/746
It turns out this is worse reporting than the "rocket powered" robot arm.
It still falls short of the "cold fusion" hype.
Duane
Edit: Here's another good link about bad science:
http://optimiskeptic.com/2011/08/21/this-is-where-bad-science-starts/
No study on the mysterious processor frequency rate reduction for the past 10 years?
1980-8088 = 2mhz.
1990-pentium = 75mhz.
2000-pentium4 = 3ghz
2010-Core i7 = 3ghz ****STAGNANT PROCESSOR DEVELOPMENT SINCE 2000*****
Uhh, we did NOT hit mores law wall yet. nor will we.
This is all about CONTROL, and keeping us stupefied. (thus why the above article made the news)
You want solar panel innovation? Try looking into what frequency solar panels absorb. And I am sure the range is deplorable. Even plants only use red and blue frequencies, but they manage fine.
Our panels are so inefficient, because they are not tailored to the frequency ranges our sun and atmosphere create. Even this is already known, but still nothing gets developed in this direction.
I am really getting tired of the globalist that has billions of dollars but can't make a simple good contribution in the invention area, but yet poor people innovate all the time with little or no money.
Einstein, tesla, just to name a few.
But we still allow these massive companies and people to dominate so badly that they oppress technology in fear of their own demise. Im sick of it.
Too bad the internet wasn't around when I invented a perpetual motion machine at age 13
I invented perpetual motion in 1973! I took my Erector set motor and coupled its output shaft to the input shaft of the generator. I wired the generator to the motor and gave the shaft a spin, expecting it to turn forever. Now granted there were bugs to work out as it was harder to turn than before they were electrically coupled. But I was sure the eight year old me would get it sorted out eventually.
I hope he doesn't become discouraged from a career in science because of all this. There should be someone close to him to explain that fame is, by nature, fickle, that not all experiments stand the test of time, and that it's okay if you stub your toe once in awhile. You just have to keep trying.
-Phil
Phil, I agree. I hope someone explains to him that there's plenty of failure in the careers of most success people. My recent favorite example is Andre Geim won the Nobel Prize in physics for the discovery of graphene. But ten years prior he was a bit of a laughing stock when he won an IgNobel for using magnets to levitate a frog.
The panels used on the ISS and on sattellites all use cells that absorb at least 3 different frequency ranges.
The problem is that for the moment they have to make 3 different cells and sandwich them together to do this.
Result: 3x efficient cells costs more than 3 times the price of a single-efficiency cell.
The same with most that uses more than one colour frequency; colour lasers, colour photography(analog), offset printing...
Alternative solar-power systems(focusing mirrors to heat salts or other 'high capacity' media, mostly) are gaining ground, but as they require a lot of 'off panel' energy extraction systems, they're not exactly suitable for small-scale(home) usage.
And unless there's a very large market for the product, they won't be produced.
And we NEED a 'home usage' sized system to efficiently drive down cost.
BTW: The easiest way to increase the efficiency of a solar panel today is to use a sun-following mount.
Strange that the kid never noticed sunflowers...
The second easiest is to use mirrors(must be cheaper than the cells) to focus additional sunlight onto the cells.
Big money. Forget I mentioned it. Where's that delete key?
Well, there have been numerous articles and papers on why the CPU fabbers have concentrated on multiple cores rather than raw speed increases. Multiple core processing is more power efficient for one thing (and better for battery-operated devices) -- you can turn a core off if it's not needed, yet the other cores can continue their threads at rated speed.
The i7 has six cores, and adding more cores is now the natural progression. It's no longer pipeline speed. I don't think stagnant is a fair word to use.
Now to this poor kid, and the usual show of pettiness you see when discussing an engineering and scientific discovery (or lack thereof): give the little guy a break. So he got excited that his research somehow centered on the coolness of Fibonacci sequences. He's not the first to think there's something more in that progression than meets the eye.
The quote from a responder on the energy blog, and reprinted in the article cited above, demonstrates why we have so few kids willing to enter science. Loaded works like "nonsense" and "horribly" are typical of engineer speak. I get so sick of that Smile as they attempt to prove their intellectual or educational superiority (and certainly proving their lack of social grace). They're so used to these kinds of negativistic "cut them down to size" phrases -- they employ them daily among their peers and management -- they don't even know they're using them.
Just say the findings are unmerited, and the concept needs further research, and then explain in simple terms why.
-- Gordon
Hich up and visit a spell,
Robert
I'm usually a bit skeptical when I see claims of fantastic breakthroughs. It wasn't the kid's specific claims that caught my attention. I was more impressed by the professonalism of the his presentation. It's a lucid and thoughtfully presented writeup that is noteworthy. So definitely, let's laud his observations and nurture his scientific apirations. Otherwise, he'll turn out to be just another bitter old skeptic like me.
He also found different way to catch more sunlight on the panels. When you get more sunlight on the panels, the voltage will stay constant for as is there is sunlight.
It's just good has the panels laying flat or facing south. Hack, I'm not getting this kind of result on the ship that I am restoring and my panels are laying flat. But, I don't have much choice, because laying the panels is the best way for me.
Numerous articles and papers? Duh, they need to explain the lack of progress (at least in the civilian sector).
Thats similar to the bank robber who is actually the security guard for the same bank. You expect him to tell on himself? No he is going to tell everyone that he saw the bank robber get away.
We will find out in the future what DARPA is doing right now with clock speeds behind the closed doors, and you will see that I am right.
I don't want to take the thunder of this theads topic, but im sorry, copying a core and increasing the wafer size to accomodate is not innovation, its keeping the dumbed down public somewhat happy that they think they are seeing innovation. Dual cpus are not innovative, and also, they could have developed multicore stuff along side the frequency. If parallax can make a 8 core mcu, intel should be making a 100core cpu, not 4 or 8. That kind of innovation was SUPPOSED to be a mid point in the year 2003.
Back to the solar panel, the kids idea was mostly a failure due to improper scientific testing standards. Hopefully he will learn that, and hopefully he will also learn that most inventors make 100 designs that don't work(failures) and only strike it on the 101st invention.
If that kid gets discouraged by all this talk, then he doesn't have what it takes to be an innovator, thats ok, many don't.
No wonder kids don't have much interest in science and engineering. Can't blame them when these technical people act like creeps towards them.
Looks to me like there is a sweet spot around 8 cores where core processing and RAM accessing reach a balance and performance is maximized. As in the Prop. For example I feel that 16 cores for a Prop 2 would have been a mistake.
Sorry Clock Loop, the kid's idea was NOT a failure, it was an investigation. Any investigation that returns a result that can be examined is a success. It is a success because we analyze the snot out of it and determine if found he something interesting, and discover where he made mistakes. Kid still deserves an "A" for the project.
"Improper scientific testing standards" - remember, this is a kid, his job is to play and learn. Playing and making mistakes is how we learn. The same applies to adults, but adults try not to admit it.
The "failure" is the news reporting that reported his misinterpretation of his results as a breakthrough without checking.
Number of processor cores and processor speed is a separate topic, why don't you start a separate thread? That would be a good discussion, I thought there were a whole bunch of factors at play.
Teach proper testing methods, for instance why was more/less solar panels installed in the Fibonacci vs flat configuration? Proper scientific method suggests using equal panels in either situation, and compare results on graph, simple and proper.
Very good. You demonstrate that you have the same understanding of proper methods as the rest of us. Now are you going to go to the kid and teach him about it? That is where the information is needed. The OTHER part of proper method is getting the information from the party that has it to the party that needs it when it will do the most good. Telling the kid BEFORE he finished his report would have done the most good, tell him now will still do some good, but telling us who already know and agree will not have much benefit.
The i7 has eight cores, at least my does.
A four core i7 has eight threads. These are often indicated as having eight cores, which is true to a point, but they're virtual cores, not actual physical cores.
-- Gordon
Most also don't understand that if you enable this technology, known as Hyperthreading, you cut the maximum speed any single program can run at by 1/2 your max processor speed. (at least when the tech first came out) but even so, today, if your core that is split, gets 2 programs using 100% then each program really only processes at 1/2 the speed of the full core.
So either way, hyperthreading sucks, is a joke, and was just an example of lame technology replacing the development of higher clock speeds.
prof_braino, actually many users here are young and the same as that kid, who have now learned that using a good scientific method is good advice, for any adventures into the physical manipulation and measurement of our world.
-Phil
Who keeps a computer long enough for that button cell to go bad?
-Phil
"After we had conducted thousands of experiments on a certain project
without solving the problem, one of my associates, after we had
conducted the crowning experiment and it had proved a failure,
expressed discouragement and disgust over our having failed to find
out anything. I cheerily assured him that we had learned something.
For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldn't be done
that way, and that we would have to try some other way."
The quote above comes from an interview with Edison that was published
in the January 1921 issue of American Magazine.
I expect that people who report on science and technology would have enough of an understanding of the field they are working in to be able to separate the possible from wishful thinking, bad science, and outright fraud. Sadly, I have had to lower my expectations considerably. That so many members of this forum questioned the results certainly separates them from the babbling bumblers that did report it without questioning it's validity.