At Science Leadership Academy, the school I currently attend, we have been building models of parabolic mirror. The mirror serves the purpose of maximizing the surface area of a solar panel.This provides a cheaper solution to those who don’t want to spend as it would cost to install multiple panels. The picture included with this [...]
Solar States is at it again! With students at the Science Leadership Academy finishing up another great semester of solar design and photovoltaic research, we thought long and hard about what our next step should be in bringing solar education and industry to the Philadelphia area. But in the end, it came down to one [...]
Solar States on Energy Watch from Micah Gold-Markel on Vimeo. Local newscasts often get a bad rap, painted as shameless ratings-grabs looking to either scare the bejesus out of you or outline the latest “health craze”. And unfortunately, the reputation is often well-deserved. Just last night, our local Fox News affiliate asked the burning journalistic [...]
The experimenting has died down in a sense because everyone is getting ready to go on Winter Break. Currently, we are planning on doing further experiments relating to our sunlight angles. After break, we will more than likely redo the Clinometers experiments if we need better accuracy, or try another form of experiment if need [...]
After performing our sunlight angle experiment with the Clinometers (I found out the proper name for them), we found the average sunlight angles. The average angle that sunlight hits our school from the West is 20°. The average angle East of our school is 30°. Using this data, we will know effective angles to set [...]
We have come to an agreement in class on what type of experiment to perform. In order to find the sunlight angles, we will be doing an experiment based on our 9th grade Geometry projects. We will have a viewing tube attached to protractors with sting and weights. As we look up to see the [...]
Now, we are in the midst of finding where the sun strikes the school at different positions. We are discussing how to set up an experiment that will allow us to find the angles that sunlight hits SLA with relative accuracy. Since there are many other buildings around the school, many taller in fact, we [...]
We’ve done a lot since I’ve last spilled my brain leakage into the internet database to be processed around the globe by possibly millions of viewers, or maybe just one who gets bored enough to take a gander in this direction. As a class, last time I posted, we had decided to divvy ourselves into [...]
It’s about two months into the school year, and we’ve working on the same thing for about the whole of October. I can sense VanK’s frustration at our tiny little baby steps, as class is devoted more to doing the homework we didn’t do than actually analyzing the homework that was supposed to be completed. [...]
For our classwide engineering project this year, we are supposed to investigate a types of solar cells that we could use in our attempt to derive energy from the sun. Each of us did research, and three major types of solar cells were identified. Copper w/ H2O, Silicon, and Titanium Dioxide w/Rasberry. As a class [...]
Solyndra – What’s really at stake
