Description:
A minimal solar cooker design based on a box with a glass lid.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Developing an intuitive feel for the dynamics of solar cooking
When you look into a solar cooker, the visible light inside doesn't seem to be that much brighter or more concentrated than the sunlight striking us as we stand and look in. Our bodies are certainly not getting hot enough to burn, much less cook, so intuition tells us that food in the oven wouldn't cook either.
...You can use your eyes to see the visible light, your skin to feel the infrared light, and your imagination to see the way the light is transformed and then trapped inside the oven.
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Solar Cooking
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Description:
An extensive index of resources related to solar cookers and solar cooking. Solar cooking involves capturing sunlight, either behind glass panes or using reflectors, focusing it on a cooking pot, thereby using the sun's light to cook ones food.
Daily Tip: Water Your Lawn Smarter
Water use and availability is a big problem society must face. There are intelligent ways to use water where we can achieve the same results while using less. If we focus just on the lawns surrounding our houses, here's a few bits of advice:
Watch the weather. Mother nature having just rained, you don't need to water the lawn.
Water in the early morning or evening. If you water in the middle of the day, much of the water evaporates before soaking into the ground. By watering in the evening it has a chance to soak deeply.
Don't mow as often. Longer grass provides shade that makes it less necessary to water the lawn.
Don't forget about the sprinkler. Apparently it's possible to water too much at one time.
Go native. Green lawns came from southern England where it rains all the time. They aren't the best choice of plants for every climate. It is probably better to have plants which match your local climate. But doing so goes against the cultural norms we grew up with.
Learn to love brown. Grass goes brown when it's dry, and it goes green when it's wet. It's very simple and natural for grass to be brown. So don't worry about the brown grass during dry periods, it's natural.
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New Flexible Plastic Solar Panels Are Inexpensive And Easy To Make
Researchers at New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) have developed an inexpensive solar cell that can be painted or printed on flexible plastic sheets. "The process is simple," said lead researcher and author Somenath Mitra, PhD, professor and acting chair of NJIT's Department of Chemistry and Environmental Sciences.
Harvesting energy directly from abundant solar radiation using solar cells is increasingly emerging as a major component of future global energy strategy, said Mitra.
...Mitra and his research team took the carbon nanotubes and combined them with tiny carbon Buckyballs (known as fullerenes) to form snake-like structures.
..."Using this unique combination in an organic solar cell recipe can enhance the efficiency of future painted-on solar cells," said Mitra.
..."Fullerene single wall carbon nanotube complex for polymer bulk heterojunction photovoltaic cells," published June 21, 2007 in the Journal of Materials Chemistry by the Royal Society of Chemistry, details the process.
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UDelaware-led team sets solar cell record
Using a novel technology that adds multiple innovations to a very high-performance crystalline silicon solar cell platform, a consortium led by the University of Delaware has achieved a record-breaking combined solar cell efficiency of 42.8 percent from sunlight at standard terrestrial conditions.
...The research was led by Allen Barnett, principal investigator and UD professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Christiana Honsberg, co-principal investigator and associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. The two direct the University's High Performance Solar Power Program and will continue working to achieve 50 percent efficiency, a benchmark that when reached would mean a doubling of the efficiency of terrestrial solar cells based around a silicon platform within a 50-month span.
...The highly efficient VHESC solar cell uses a novel lateral optical concentrating system that splits solar light into three different energy bins of high, medium and low, and directs them onto cells of various light sensitive materials to cover the solar spectrum.
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