The day has arrived when you have to think about how to build solar panels in your own home to save energy bills and therefore precious money and do your little bit for saving the environment.
The good thing about doing this is it can be a fun exercise for an individual and of course, for the entire family as well. To get started on making your cell to harness the energy from the sun to power your home, you will need to make a visit to the hardware store.
Once there, buy half a square foot of a sheet of copper flashing, an electric stove, a large mouth bottle, glass or plastic (5 litre mineral jar), a sensitive micro-ammeter, few table spoons of table salt, tap water, sand paper or wire brush on an electric drill, metal shears and three alligator clip leads.
Now to start the experiment. Clean your hands thoroughly and wipe it dry completely. The copper sheeting has to be cut to the size of the diameter of the food heater. Now, wash the sheet with detergent in order to do away with any oil residue on it. With the sand paper, wipe the sheet dry.
After this, place copper sheet on stove again and turn on stove to highest heating setting. What you want is for the sheet to turn orange, red, purple or pink; then as the stove heats more, the color from the sheet vanishes and soon, the sheet will darken. It needs to be COOKED for a half hour.
As soon as it cools down entirely, it should be held under a tap of running water to allow the flakes to fall off. This has to be done with ease and a gentle touch so as not to hurt the SOLAR PANEL.
Now, cut another piece of the copper sheet keeping the same size at the first one. Place the two in the bottle whose neck is cut. The sheets should not come in contact with each other. The portion of the sheet that faced up while being heated on the stove must be kept facing outward in the bottle.
Now, attach your clip leads, one to the new copper plate, and one to the COOKED one. The clean sheet should be attached to the positive side of the meter and the cooked one to the negative.
Now, attach the leads. The second sheet should be wired to the positive area of the meter and the first one must be clipped to the negative one. In hot water, put in a good number of tablespoons of salt and mix thoroughly. This concoction has to be poured into the bottle ensuring that the sheets are not submerged up to an inch from top. This is your home manufactured solar panel!
The cell produces 50 micro amps at 0.25 volts. Do not expect to light bulbs to light or charge batteries with this device. It can be used as a light detector or light meter and it would take acres of them to power your house which would be very expensive.
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