Friday, February 10, 2012

Solar Techonology

The energy of the light is part of your existence. Without it life wouldn’t have been able to grow, and if it suddenly ended, life would disappear.


The relationship between the man and the Sun has always been filled with mystery and confusion. Since the men started to consider the sun a God, the explanations about the light and energy we get from it were variants, but we have always known how to take advantage of its effects.

The first farmers discovered, many thousand years ago, the relationship that exists between the hours of sunlight exposure and the speed of growth of some vegetables, but until the scientists clarified the process of Photosynthesis, said relationship was difficult to explain.

Some villages in the ancient times came to develop mirrors and lens capable to concentrate the light, but besides on rare occasions, people only took advantage of some of the reflective and refractive properties of the light, without knowing how to explain the energetic properties.



Source: inhabitat.com
 In places with high sun exposure times and clean atmosphere, is possible to obtain part of the domestic electricity from the Sun. Through big panels, provided with a high number of photovoltaic cells, its possible to transform the solar energy into electricity to warm the house, make run the appliances, get hot water and all those things we usually get thanks to the energy from the electric companies. All of this thanks to a clean and economic system.


The sunlight going mainstream

The human beings have learnt to use the sun light better. Little and big experiments have been developed to make our lives more comfortable. Greenhouses use the sunlight to maintain its elevated inner temperature; in cold weather places, the homes have big windows to use better the light and heat from the sun. There are experimental electric centrals that transform the energy through photovoltaic cells.




The invention of the artificial light

source: littlerockfamilyhousing.com

So far we have seen examples of how the solar energy can be transformed into other forms of energy. However, human beings also have learnt to produce light from other energetic sources.

Our ancestors discovered that anything that burns produces certain amount of light, but it took a long time to find materials that could burn slow enough and produce significant amount of light. The torches, the candles and candiles were the only acceptable result produced after thousand of years, until in the XIX century some experiments were developed to use the gas and petroleum as lighting systems. 

 At the end of that century a really effective system of artificial illumination was found: the light bulbs that could produce light from electricity. Inside there was a metal filament; when electricity flows, the filament heats ‘til incandescence and produces light. For the filament to not burn, Oxygen must be removed from the inside of the bulb. Many electric lamps have been developed; some don’t have filaments, but gases capable to emit light.
 

4 comments:

Unknown said...

All of these are great implementations we need to use!

Sasho said...

Didn't know that solar energy was used in ancient times, we must used it more!

Vague Raconteur said...

As long as you know that light is a large mix of frequencies in the spectrum, produced when electrons release energy gained from being provided with more energy to absorb in an endothermic fashion, then you'll know it requires only a few specific reactions to produce light. A current of electrons helps quite a lot. ^.^

Sloppybroom said...

I agree that this needs to be used more. . but certain problems arise with this such as environmental damage, keeping the cells clean, etc. it's a great idea, but still very costly.

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