Teenager invents £23 solar panel that could be solution to developing world's energy needs

UK Daily Mail ^

[mnehring]

A new type of solar panel using human hair could provide the world with cheap, green electricity, believes its teenage inventor.

Milan Karki, 18, who comes from a  village in rural Nepal, believes he has found the solution to the developing world's energy needs.

The young inventor says hair is easy to use as a conductor in solar panels and could revolutionise renewable energy.

[Yo-Yo]

Even the “bright idea” bulb has gone CFL?

[mnehring]

LOL, I didn’t even notice that..

[a fool in paradise]

Alternate technologies use static electricity obtained by stroking a housecat.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Total BS!

[Callahan]

Does this mean Al Gore can shave Rosie O’Donnell’s back and turn a profit?

[Tarpon]

Well yes it might, but a coal power plant is a sure thing. I have serious doubts about this ruse. And why exactly do we prohibit these poor countries from doing anything to improve their standard of living — Ask a liberal.

DDT would also help, cheap, easy to produce, easy to deploy, hurts nothing, except pests and oh yeah, kills malaria and west Nile virus carrying mosquitoes.

[Constitution Day]

I bet he’s got a perpetual motion machine up his sleeve, too.

[FMBass]

What a hair brained idea!

[exist]

Let T Boone Pickens run his whole business on it first. Then I’ll try it.

[MHGinTN]

Aw come on, it makes good barbershop conversation!

[driftdiver]

“The young inventor says hair is easy to use as a conductor in solar panels and could revolutionise renewable energy.”

Well that could grow on you.

[crusty old prospector]

Maybe he should try spider webs?

[mnehring]

Technically, melanin is considered a conductive polymer, so he may have stumbled on something.

http://plastics.inwiki.org/Conductive_polymers

[djf]

Ummm... I’ll eat my words and kiss my own rear end if this is anything but a snow job.

Never in my 40+ years of chemistry sets, telescopes, microscopes, digital voltmeters, etc have I ever heard that human hair exposed to sunlight suddenly develops this magical electric potential!

Now I did know a couple gals during and since college that had long hair and were pretty electric, but that’s not what this is about!

;-)

[ansel12]

Doesn’t the solar panel problem get “solved” about every six months or so for the last 30 years?

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

Mullet power!!

[mnehring]

Physical properties and technological applicationsAbsorption spectrum of melanin

Melanin is a biopolymer and a neuropeptide. In the early 1970s, researchers found melanin to be an organic semiconductor (Science, vol 183, 853-855 (1974)). Studies revealed that melanin acted as an electrical threshold switch, emitting a flash of light— electroluminescence— when it switched. Though the findings were published, these findings largely were ignored. Melanin also shows negative differential resistance, a classic property of electronically active, conductive, organic polymers. In 2000, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists for their later 1977 work in the discovery and development of conductive polymers. The polymers utilized in this research were "polyacetylene black" melanins.

The original discoverers of switching and high electrical conductivity in melanin and related organic semiconductors were not honored in 2000. However, their melanin organic electronic device is now in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History's "Smithsonian Chips" collection of historic solid-state electronic devices.
Melanin influences neural activity and mediates the conduction of radiation, light, heat and kinetic energy. As such, it is the subject of intense interest in biotech research and development, most notably in organic electronics (sometimes called "plastic electronics") and nanotechnology, where dopants are used to dramatically boost melanin conductivity. Pyrrole black and acetylene black are the most commonly studied organic semiconductors.

From: http://en.allexperts.com/e/m/me/melanin.htm

[mnehring]

See post #18..

Work on those yoga poses.

[EyeGuy]

Yet another hare-brained solar scheme?

I’d much rather mine for King Coal, or drill for black gold....Texas Tea......

[RobRoy]

I assume “on” was meant as “onto”. ;)

[GeronL]

Gee, you mean it didn’t come from a huge federal project?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

This is so easily debunked it's embarrassing.

A silicon solar panel of dimensions 1 foot by 1 foot has one square foot of surface are upon which to capture light.

This "solar panel" has a few strands of hair arranged in a grid. It is doubtful that a 1 foot by 1 foot panel of this hair-brained design would have a single square inch of hair surface area.

It wouldn't be capable of capturing even 1% of the impending light energy, even if it worked.

That was easy.

[Uncle Miltie]

Mero afnu Nepali Bako nam Ram Prasad Karki ho. Hora, Milan Karki mero bai Prakash Karkiko chora?

[missnry]

This guy is going to generate a lot of electricity!

[Bitsy]

Does this mean Al Gore can shave Rosie O’Donnell’s back and turn a profit?

That's funny! And, now we can find a use for all the hair from those oldies we euthanize to keep healthcare costs down - wow a double payload. Who woulda thunk!

[djf]

I’m still calling BS.

Lots of things can give out flashes of light or pulses of electricity when their states change.

A quartz crystal can put out a pretty darn good jolt of juice when it’s bent - the peizoelectric effect.

If you want to see something really fascinating, get some wintergreen mints, go into the bathroom after dark, look into the mirror, turn off the light, and with your mouth at least partly open, crush a mint between your teeth.

Even an amount of juice as low as 4-5 volts is detectable by our senses, I’ve been in hot tubs during the day with babes, if there were actual electric volts floating around, I woulda noticed...

They don’t call them “Fakirs” for nothing!

[T Minus Four]

Why is it that hair can be a shining, fragrant, beautiful adornment that people love to touch, smell and admire, but the minute it parts company with the scalp, it becomes a vile, repulsive, dirty thing.

[reagan_fanatic]

[the long march]

Purrrrfect

[rednesss]

"Mullet power!!"

Dang!!!!

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

Wow, that boy looks like he’s got sufficient mullet power to move that Chevatruck real good like!

Well, OK, maybe the mirrors.

[Sparko]

Just as a general comment:

Suppose Edison said, “I am going to give you illumination and I am going to burn the cotton thread that will glow to get you that illumination.”

[Iron Munro]

[heartwood]

So, actual evidence that blondes are dim bulbs?

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

I’d much rather mine for King Coal, or drill for black gold....Texas Tea......

And for the US that would be best.

For some poor farmer who just wanted to be able to charge some batteries for his cell phone, radio and a couple of lamps this would be a nice solution.

[EyeGuy]

“For some poor farmer who just wanted to be able to charge some batteries for his cell phone, radio and a couple of lamps this would be a nice solution.”

####

Maybe.

We shall see.

But my post, of course, was in response to the thread title which said:

“....panel that could be solution to developing world’s energy needs...”

This implies much more grandiose applications beyond just a few very small devices with extremely light energy requirements.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

"Developing world" in British usually means what some here call third world.

So the market for this device is probably what I said.

Something like this would be a blessing for about half of the world.

[EyeGuy]

“Something like this would be a blessing for about half of the world.”

####

Yes it would. Snatching energy out of the air would benefit EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE.

IF the developing world’s energy needs stay on the extremely limited individual basis you define, I suppose we could painfully stretch the point to agree that this unproven device “...could be solution to developing world’s energy needs..”.

On a very PARTIAL level.

[Harmless Teddy Bear]

We never have permanent solutions, only temporary ones.

Building big coal electric plants would do most of the world no good. The cost of getting the wiring in place alone would be prohibitive. And they wouldn't use enough energy to pay for it any time in the next 20 years.

For the next ten to twenty years this could be a partial bridge.

This could work for now. As to how the future would develop... :shrug: it is not here yet.

Small solutions tend to work best in the developing world and produce the most long term changes.