But panels? So yester… today. With the recent over production of solar panels, they are
more affordable than ever before, but when I get energy from the sun, I don’t
want to be restricted to some lame old panel.
Telling you why solar energy is a good idea seems kind of
patronizing. So here we go: The sun is a ball of fun that emits energy
consistently and always so get on that. Good job me!
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| Bending not a problem for Mr. Solar Powered Paper |
Enter, MIT. In a recent effort to “make cool shit”, they
decided to find a way to print solar cells on whatever they felt like (paper,
in this case.)
SKIP THIS NEXT SECTION IF YOU HATE LEARNING:
These photovoltaic arrays function in a fairly simple way,
just like a normal solar panel. Photons (light) hit the material, causing the
material to eject electrons, and because of the way the cells are made (with a
positive and negative side) the electrons ejected form an electrical current
aka electricity.
If you missed that physics lecture, and care, NASA gives a
great explanation here.
Cool fact, solar energy technology was developed because of the space program.
Too bad that’s gone! ;(
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| They can take away our spaceships, but they can't take away our TechNomogies! |
This ice cream cake was a boss. Making it in 80 degrees weather was not boss, but at least
it wasn’t 100 degrees with storms! (today is awful). I used a papery white
Vanilla Bean ice cream to match the blueberry cells that I hand printed onto
the top of the cake.
Keeping things light and fluffy (and still good straight out
of a freezer), I used angel food cake as the base. Then things got interesting.
Going for a crazy unique texture I decided to mix home whipped cream with
melted white chocolate. Right off the bat this stuff was WEIRD, with lots of
white chocolate chunks in the mix. After freezing for a while, it decided to
cooperate and became the melt in your face white-chocolaty goodness that I
needed to balance the cake out.
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| Took this in the 5 seconds I had before the cake melted into a puddle of delicious. |
Bringing this stuff in to WMEAC on a hot day really powered
up the interns (HAHA, oh man I am so jocular.) The problem with this
technology is that (for now) it is only 1% efficient vs the 35% efficiency
of your average solar panel. However, this hasn’t stopped me from dreaming
big:
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| Solar powered cat of the future! |
