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7th-Grader Designs Three Dimensional Solar Cell
Hugh Pickens writes "12-year-old William Yuan's invention of a highly-efficient, three-dimensional nanotube solar cell for visible and ultraviolet light has won him an award and a $25,000 scholarship from the Davidson Institute for Talent Development. 'Current solar cells are flat and can only absorb visible light'" Yuan said. 'I came up with an innovative solar cell that absorbs both visible and UV light. My project focused on finding the optimum solar cell to further increase the light absorption and efficiency and design a nanotube for light-electricity conversion efficiency.' Solar panels with his 3D cells would provide 500 times more light absorption than commercially-available solar cells and nine times more than cutting-edge 3D solar cells. 'My next step is to talk to manufacturers to see if they will build a working prototype,' Yuan said. "If the design works in a real test stage, I want to find a company to manufacture and market it.""
How do people that young get access to tools to build these things?
but has he got any pubic hair?
So does anyone know what 3d shape he used to achieve a 500x efficiency gain? I would RTFA but it appears to have been slashdotted.
If his idea works as well stated in the article, the guy deserves more than "a $25,000 scholarship from the Davidson Institute for Talent Development." The fact that it's a seventh grader makes it even more astounding.
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
being a jealous curmudgeonly skeptic, i have to ask: what are the careers of his parents?
i tend to observe suspicious correlations between kids that win science fairs and kids with parents that are scientists or engineers.
I thought multi-layered solar cells which captured increasingly high energy photos were common. I thought there were clearly understood theoretical limits on conversion efficiency, and that it would not be remotely possible to get 500 times more light absorption than currently achieved. I'm extremely skeptical.
It seems like Mr. Yuan has decided to skip right from Elementary school to the Doctoral level, getting a huge head start on the rest of his age group. I wish I would have thought of that...
1) Write down kid's name 2) Buy stock in whoever picks him up 3) Profit! Hang on, I've got too many filled out steps...
when a kid's parents have helped them with their science fair projects.
For conscience is the wound, and there's naught to staunch it
Slightly more technical detail available from Davison Institute website:
In his project, âoeHigh Efficient 3-Dimensional Nanotube Solar Cell for Visible and UV Light,â William invented a novel solar panel that enables light absorption from visible to ultraviolet light. He designed carbon nanotubes to overcome the barriers of electron movement, doubling the light-electricity conversion efficiency. William also developed a model for solar towers and a computer program to simulate and optimize the tower parameters. His optimized design provides 500 times more light absorption than commercially-available solar cells and nine times more than the cutting-edge, three-dimensional solar cell.
"Furthermore...
OMG! Zerg Rush! KEKEKEKEKEKEKE"
apologies, i had to bring the discussion down to my iq level at his age
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
William Yuan's bright idea to create a new, more efficient solar cell earned him top honors as Oregon's only 2008 Davidson Fellow.
As part of the honor, the 12-year-old Bethany boy will be flown to Washington, D.C., for a reception Sept. 24 at the Library of Congress where he will receive his award and a $25,000 scholarship from the Davidson Institute for Talent Development.
"William's work was evaluated by university professors and environmental scientists," said Tacie Moessner, Davidson Fellows program manager in a call from Reno, Nev. "They look for the project's potential to benefit society and make sure it is socially relevant. Generally, the projects need to be at the graduate level."
Yuan worked on his project for the past two years with the encouragement of his science teacher Susan Duncan; support of his parents Gang Yuan and Zhiming Mei; and counsel of professional mentors Professor Chunfei Li of Portland State University's Center for Nanofabrication and Electron Microscopy, Fred Li of Applied Materials Inc. and Professor Shaofan Li of the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of California - Berkeley.
"He is our youngest fellow in science that we've ever had," Moessner said. "He is really spectacular.
"His project will really make a difference in advancing the technology of solar cells. You would never know he's 12 looking at the quality of his work."
Young talent
William Yuan is a seventh-grader in Meadow Park Middle School's Summa options program.
He is an active member of the school's Math Engineering Science Achievement (MESA) Club, First Lego League team and participant in the Science Bowl and MathCounts programs. He is also a two-time, second-place chess champion for the state.
Recognizing his interest in science, math and engineering, Yuan's science teacher encouraged him to tackle a challenging engineering project for the Northwest Science Expo after introducing him to nanotechnology and renewable energy research.
"We learned about some great energy and environmental issues," Yuan said. "To try to help, I researched the application of nanotechnology and renewable energy.
"I felt they would best complement my background knowledge and experience. After extensive research and community outreach, I wanted to work on a project to find a solution for some of the problems of the world."
Yuan decided to focus his project on finding the most efficient way to harness the sun's energy.
"I felt solar energy had large potential but it was underused," he explained. "Fossil fuels like oil, coal and natural gas are only finite and are slated to run out by 2050.
"We need to make solar energy more cost effective and efficient."
With that thought in mind, Yuan got to work.
"Current solar cells are flat and can only absorb visible light," he said. "I came up with an innovative solar cell that absorbs both visible and UV light. My project focused on finding the optimum solar cell to further increase the light absorption and efficiency and design a nanotube for light-electricity conversion efficiency."
Yuan invested countless hours in his research, seeking out new resources in the field to find a workable real-world solution.
"He has worked very hard in the past couple years," his father Gang Yuan said. "We're grateful that he had great mentors and teachers to guide him.
"When he started on his research, he had great curiosity and wanted to dig into it more. As his parents, we looked for experiences to help him."
Watching his dedication impressed William's parents.
"This generation's sense of urgency is much stronger than my generation's," his father said. "They are thinking about the future and want to know how environmental issues will impact their generation."
Promising future
Tapping into that talent and giving gifted youth the opportunity to excel is what the Davidson Institute is all about.
The national nonprofit organization recognized 20 students this year for their
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I love to hear about a 12 year old who floors all the latest engineers out there in making solar energy more efficient than anything else. It goes to show you how much of it is pure bureaucratic BS when the gov. stops new technologies from emerging just so they can squeeze that last buck out of the consumer until moving on to the next technology ( as per phones here in Canada )
This should happen more often, and i think if this kid is able to make this happen
so should all the rest of them out there....as we are searching to replace the current energy source.
I have such little faith in humankind, except when I hear a break out story like this one,
I look forward to seeing what 50 years from now will look like.
the website is called "the beaverton valley times" and you slashdotted that poor thing into oblivion.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
If his idea works as well stated in the article, the guy deserves more than "a $25,000 scholarship from the Davidson Institute for Talent Development."
Oh yeah. And if he doesn't get a real return on this while patent trolls are sucking blood out of industry, there's something very wrong.
If it's his invention and it does what it says he does, this is exactly the kind of thing the enterprise system should reward generously.
Tweet, tweet.
You can't absorb more light than is there.
I'm not doubting that this is an idea with merit, but IIRC current PV cells are about 10% efficient, recent one being rather better. I can conceive (although I'd be skeptical) of a cell that captures 500% of the energy that similarly priced cells do, which would amount to 50% efficiency. That's seems almost too good to be true, but not nearly as impossible as getting 50x more energy out than the Sun puts in.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If you google for 3D solar arrays, you find that this isn't really something new.
Doesn't anyone at local newspapers do fact checking? If today's solar cells run at 5 to 19% efficiency, then that make "500x as efficient" 2500% to 9500%. Sheesh. Anything to grab the reader's attention.
So TFAbstract suggests that conventional solar cells absorb less then 0.2% of the available light? I call big BS on that, it is not even energy conversion, just absorbtion. So his new toy may only be getting hot in the sun, not doing anything usefull.
Now on to the article itself, see if it was only the submitter or more that did not grasp physics.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Here's some more info about 3D cells (other than the 3 powerpoint printouts in the background of the kid's headshot:
http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?id=1337
500 times more light absorption than commercially-available solar cells
Uhm, no. FAIL.
Still, if he's getting money, there's likely something good going on here, but the reporting on this is completely ridiculous. It's enough to make me curious as to the REAL figures.
I call shenanigans. Current standard solar cells are more than 0.2% efficient, so a 500x improvement would capture more energy than the sun puts out.
While this could certainly improve the energy budget, it has the minor problem that it violates the laws of physics.
A new invention could revolutionize solar energy - and it was made by a 12-year-old in Beaverton.
A new invention could revolutionize solar energy - and it was made by a 12-year-old from Eureka.
There, fixed it.
Impetuous! Homeric!
My medulla oblongata could sure use a stiffy right now.
Oh yeah? When I was in 7th grade, I created a "crossbow" out of a paper clip and rubber band that could fling paper wads clear across the room! ...Eh?
Someone feed this kid some spice melange. Fast.
Solar panels with his 3D cells would provide 500 times more light absorption than commercially-available solar cells and nine times more than cutting-edge 3D solar cells.
Since commercially-available solar cells in fact absorb more than 90% of the light in the usable bands-- and about fifty percent over the whole solar spectrum, including the non-usable wavelenghts-- that's pretty darn amazing.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
We have seen allot of theoretical technical innovation in solar and battery technology in the past 10 years with little new technology in production.
In the mean time I see trucks with 40 foot long windmill blades pass by on the highway in front my office everyday. At least one renewable is being put to work.
Science is the Real TRUTH!
http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?id=1337
I'll bet the reality is that he added something to it to improve it a little more. Still laudable, but come on.
"Regular solar cells are only 2D and only allow light interaction once," he said.
If this means what I think it means, it would seem to indicate that he has worked out some type of translucent PV cell that allows him to either stack cells or to mirror the light to cause it to travel through multiple cells.
If you could create a translucent PV cell that still performed on par with today's leading PV cells, and you put it on top of a mirror, and then you put a semi-translucent mirror on top of the PV cell, you might be able to increase the efficiency of a single cell with out increasing the silicone. You'd still be losing some energy to heat, but from the lay-mans arm chair, it would seem to be worth a shot. And completely concievable as something a 12 year old who is good with math and science could figure out on paper (determine amount of energy input and the amount of energy transferred/lost to heat for each pass through the PV cell, and the reflection/refraction rates for the mirrors.
Anyway, that's my first thought after reading what scant details were mentioned.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
Betya its a father+son project. HHMM. Dad and I built a Go-kart.. Wonder if you can get more chicks with a solar cell than a Go-Kart..
... I'll have a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster with a side of Plutonium Nyborg
A 500% increase is a five-fold increase. Not five-hundred fold.
Kid, don't let the looters destroy you.
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
If I counted up all the energy "breakthrough" articles on Slashdot, it would seem impossible that we're all still paying $$$ for gas and electricity.
What do we really have to show for it? Expensive and failure-prone compact fluorescent bulbs? How come these massive increases in efficiency never seem to equal real products?
I agree that this is (or ought to be patentable), but isn't there prior art for "take something that traditionally was deployed in 2 dimentions and array it 3 dimensionally to gain a huge increasd in surface area".
Ultimately, how different is this from "take a process that used to be done on paper and deploy it on a computer network for enhanced efficiency"?
Somehow, the realization of the 'product' as a physical thing makes it fell alright to me. So what, other than the zero cost of replication makes software that different?
To me, it's mostly the motivation... i.e. to prevent interoperability. Software's all about standards, and patent-based monopolies just screw up the whole ecosystem. Is there something analogous in the world of physical inventions?
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
......feelings of inferiority.....
But I can't believe any 7th grader would write this:
I came up with an innovative solar cell that absorbs both visible and UV light. My project focused on finding the optimum solar cell to further increase the light absorption and efficiency and design a nanotube for light-electricity conversion efficiency.
If you don't think a middle school student can use big words, you haven't watched BumpityBoo's vlog.
i lost to a chick who was performing live open heart surgery on rats
i didn't feel inadequate: my parents weren't high ranking research scientists who could get the authorization to let their children have the run of the university research facilities on weekends
and who i knows how much else her parents guided her through
its far more impressive to build an aerodynamic soap box derby car out of balsa wood than it is to turn the ignition on your dad's cessna
well, in terms of personal achievement that is
i'm not saying i'd rather play with balsa wood than a cessna ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Maybe his device simply siphons off a bit of power from the LHC?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
You know telescopes were invented by a couple of kids playing with lenses their dad had given them(he was a lens maker). Also I understand the 3D ultrasound was invented by a young man also. If I have the story right, his Dad was a doctor and complained one time that it was so annoying that Ultrasounds have these hard to interpret 2D type images and wished there was some software to turn it 3D. Turns out the kid had software that does just that on his PC at home. So he didn't invent Ultrasound or 3D translation algorithms, he just put two technologies he knew about together.
The point here is not that these kid's accomplishments are not praiseworthy, they most certainly ARE! The point is we are beginning to see the true impact of the information age. There are an amazing amount of things to invent, if you just put together two or three things we already know. And the next generation, so familiar with the Internet, will start doing this on a routing basis since no one told them it couldn't be done.
Show me the product now or don't mention it. Call me when it's on the market and I can buy it.
Is anybody else feeling really inadequate right now?
It is nothing but our own pride that insists that we are either the best in the world, or completely worthless.
There is a huge sliding grayscale of worthiness in the intellectual/industriousness domain.
The world needs a rich supply of people spread across that middle range.
In fact...the world needs the middlers more than it needs the geniuses. Given enough time the middlers can eventually get there on their own; the geniuses just accelerate the process a bit.
Once in a while a genius will do something that no number of middlers could ever have accomplished...which is nice...but once the genius has done it, the rest of us can follow suit. So, while we may need the occasional genius, we really don't need very many of them...whereas large numbers of middlers are the foundation of stable technological progress.
Drop the superego. Learn the value of who you already are, and be proud of it.
I think you could say 500x if they are correct in stating current solar panels only absorb visible light. Then saying they absorb 90%, is only 90% of visible light. If he created a cell that can absorb UV then it is possible to absorb more 'light'.
If the design works in a real test stage, I want to find a company to manufacture and market it.
And retire. At 13.
I seem to remember looking at an exhibit at Te Papa in Wellington, NZ, at least two or three years ago that showed the different efficiencies of various 3D shapes in solar collection. But that's about the extent of my solar cell design knowledge! So did this kid think up something completely different, or did he come up with an improved 3D design?
And there never was.
He had a good idea. He did research on that idea. He came up with a design based on that idea and supported by that research.
What aspect of this requires a college education?
C'mon guys, this isn't the first "young genius revolutionizes solar industry" article that we've see. Don't you remember the one about the hot chick who made solar cells with an inkjet and a pizza oven? I give the kid some mad props; he's going places. But I doubt this will turn into commercially viable technology.
He surely don't know how to locate USA in a map...because many people in the USA doesn't have maps, right?
This kid sounds like a character out of a Heinlein novel. Now all he needs to do is to use his new solar cell to power his home-built starship that he can fly to Epsilon Eridani so he can form a coalition of aliens to confront the evil slime creatures bent on destroying Earth, all before school vacation ends.
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
kuro5hit diss!
KEKEKEKEKEKEKE
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
what about these guys?
They have been researching (and producing) cells like this for years; anyone see how they are different?
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
Since commercially-available solar cells convert around 10% of the incident light to electricity, we can safely say that they are "absorbing" at least 10%.
So, if they absorb 500 times that amount we have a solar cell with 500*10% = 5000% conversion efficiency!
YOWZAH!!!
Now the skeptics out there will claim that this violates conservation of energy, but did they stop to consider that his may be a new form of low temperature solid state nuclear fusion merely catalyzed by solar radiation???
HMMMMM?????
Seastead this.
Wake me up when someone publicly comes out and says that even at 100% efficiency at high noon, on the equator the energy->area ratio is too crappy to be a working long term solution.
Then maybe some real work can be done...
1) Develop 3d nanotube solar cell
2) Win science contest
3) Complete manufacturing tests
4) Manufacture
5) Become billionaire...
6) Jill Smith will like me! x0x0x
The kid is really bright and plugged in. Congratulations to him. The astonishing thing is not that the kid is so bright and supported by his parents, mentors and teachers (all of these things are true, amazing and good for all of them), but that no other serious scientist pursued this sort of design yet. How many other young prodigies are being left by the wayside of scientific innovation by the poor quality of science and math education in this country? What other opportunities for innovation, creativity and the support of young minds are being squandered due to our shortsighted and parsimonious approach to education? Thank (insert deity or lack of deity here) that "No Child Left Behind" hasn't broken this young man's considerable intellectual spirit.
Let's hope he patents this & manufactures them so we can get these solar cells.
Chances are, however, he'll just sell the idea for a lot of money to OPEC; the invention will get burried; and it will never see the sun again.
The second phase would be far more difficult to develop. He wanted a serum that would temporarily enlarge a select portion of the human anatomy, increasing the size without causing permenant damage. Because of the complexity of the human circulatory system, which the serum would be required to emulate, his progress was slow and filled with disappointments. He continued his experiments relentlessly, forgetting his social committments and all other endeavors, and hid his findings from any curious onlookers. He had no social life, and barely ate enough to maintain his slight figure. It was during a marathon experiment with unlikely compounds, that he found the extract from poison ivy worked. True, the side effects needed to be minimized, but when the extract was injected into part of the human body, for example, a toe, it would virtually double in size instantly, and achieve a tremendous increase in synaptic responses. With further experimentation, he was able to synthesize the same elements, and introduce a third element that would dramatically reduce the amount of time the serum stayed active in the body; from three days to a mere 3-hours. Relieved, he was finally able to sleep soundly, filled with dreams that he soon hoped to make reality...
(cut & pasted after searching on literotica.com, I'm sure there are better ones)
From that comment I gather that this 'design' is in a very questionable state. If a real prototype has not been proven to work then this design is worth roughly the negative value of the piece of paper its written on. The physics of silicon is very involved at the nano-structure level and getting it right on the first go is very difficult considering having a single ion in the wrong strata could short out the entire cell and it would produce nothing. For a 3D cell to work it would have to use the physical properties of light such that different wavelengths of light penetrate to different depths before absorption, and each depth needs to have the ability to trap and carry that charge out to a collection grid on the surface without interfering with the other layers collection grids. Each grid would then set up a charged field that would potentially affect the silicon around it thereby defeating much of the gains of increased 3D collection area. For a 12 year old to get that right on paper the first time would be nothing short of astonishing. My advice? Build a prototype first then talk to reporters later, and then this will be surly slashdot worthy. I'll give the kid a lot of credit here, but lets not jump the gun until we know some variation of this actually works.
And now I ask anyone with a UID lower than 1,000,000, what have you done with your life?
Oh wait...
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
...be playing video games or something?
Where is my Nano Solar Paint that has greater than 40% efficiency dammit!
That was years ago. Can I buy a bucket to paint my electric car? No.
I take this sort of BS with a huge grain of el salto.
Also who cares if you get 500% more absorption of it is 5000% more expensive to manufacture. Crap like that tends to matter in the real world.
Good for him he can generate interesting theoretical models at age 12. Hope he sticks with it, and it 10 years or so actually comes up with something. He will still only be 22, and that's not too bad either, provided he doesn't get side tracked by pesky girls or anything...
"At first, he couldn't believe his calculations.
"This solar cell can't be generating this much electricity, it can't be absorbing this much extra light," he recalled thinking."
And then he realized he should have divided instead of multiplied.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Captain O'Hagan: I swear to God I'm going to pistol whip the next guy who says, " Shenanigans."
Mac: Hey Farva what's the name of that restaurant you like with all the goofy shit on the walls and the mozzarella sticks?
Farva: You mean Shenanigans?
Mac: OOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
Thorny: OOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
[as they hand the Captain their pistols]
At least you have a moderately low slashdot uid :(
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Very strong parental expectations.
I'm guessing a reporter saw 500% and accidentally read it as 500x. Even a 500% (5x) increase from the current ~10% efficiency we have now would be huge, but with the recently coined Photovoltaic Moore's Law, I'd believe it. Maybe this is done by several layers each catching 10% (or less) of the energy?
The effective surface area of an object's three-dimensional "face" vastly exceeds the surface area of another object's two-dimensional face. This means you can actually absorb more of the sun's light. However, only so much light shines in any given area, and it's still a ray from above, so shadows should start to affect this negatively at a certain point, so while this could certainly give a boost, it's not going to do much (certainly not 500x!).
I could have sworn I read something about 3-d solar panels a while ago, but nobody else seems to have. There seem to be tons of hits searching for 3-d solar cell, many of which are from 2007.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
When i was 12 i discovered... ... err myself??
My question is which is the better achievement?
> his 3D cells would provide 500 times more light absorption
Bogus alert! BWEEEP BWEEEP! Bogus alert!
Quantum efficiency of current silicon-based cells in most of the visible light range is on the order of 90%. Look it up. (here, be lazy http://pvcdrom.pveducation.org/CELLOPER/QUANTUM.HTM)
To satisfy your curiosity, the reason the very best silicon-based cells have about 22% _electrical_efficiency_ in spite of capturing 90% or more of the incoming light is due to a wide variety of reasons, including:
1) re-radiating of the energy in the IR
2) electron mobility issues, getting trapped at impurities and such
3) recombination, where the ejected electron finds another hole before flowing out of the circuit - this becomes more of an issue for shorter wavelengths (blue, violet, UV)
4) not making it to a conductor on the surface; you can add more conductor but that blocks more light.
5) The #1 reason is that a single bandgap, like in a normal solar cell, can only extract a single amount of energy out of the photoelectrons. For silicon the cutoff is in the red. That means that the extra energy in blue light (or green, yellow, and especially UV) is wasted, turning into heat. You can tune the bandgap up to get more of that energy, but that means you can no longer capture the long-wavelengths and all of that energy down there is lost. It's a catch-22.
So adding "500 times" the absorption is, obviously, impossible. Now its possible this is 500x in the UV, but surface recombination wipes that out anyway. To solve THAT you have to use multi-junction cells. They're in production already, but extremely expensive. So again...
Bogus alert! BWEEEP BWEEEP! Bogus alert!
Maury
Hmmm, 30 seconds of internet surfing and you all have the answers/criticisms for the issue. Why not do the competition next year if you are so smart?
We need more people like this young lad: focused, dedicated, and willing to work toward the common good.
It's 500x more efficient, but it takes up 1000x more area... lol.
Q: Are you smarter than a 7th grader?
A: Most likely not this one.
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Looks like the Beaverton Valley Times just got slashdotted.
This article, even the quotes from the inventor, contain some major misinformation.
First off, solar cells DO absorb UV light. The absorb all light that has higher energy than the bandgap of whatever semiconductor they are using. The problem is that of the energy of a given photon, all energy is excess of the bandgap becomes heat and is wasted. Using a material with a wider bandgap isn't a good solution, because then you have more photons passing through unabsorbed.
To reduce waste, engineers can stack layers of different semiconductors on top of each other, with the widest bandgaps on top. So this idea of "3D" solar cells is nothing new.
What may be going on here is that the kid found some material with a wide bandgap and good bonding with other layers, to use as a new top layer, to get more energy out of the UV light. I know there had been studies on using diamond, as it has a very wide bandgap, but there are lots of issues that make it difficult to actually use.
More likely, he hasn't found anything new or unknown, and his ideas are not already in use simply due to issues of manufacturability that he hasn't accounted for. However, the fact that he, at the age of 12, has figured out what graduate students in the field have to study hard to understand, is amazing and most definitely deserving of scholarships and praise.
How do people that young get access to tools to build these things?
At this point (according to one of TFAs, the other is slashdotted) it looks like he hasn't built anything. He's only done some modeling. Now he's looking for somebody to build a prototype and see if the real world behaves like the model.
And if it doesn't it's not his fault - it's the tool's.
So your question should be "How do people that young get access to tools to model these things?"
Answer: Good schools, good teachers, and maybe a corporate grant program.
Any bets on whether Meadow Park Middle School is a government-run public school?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The asian kids were the worst too. My asian high school co-valedictorian had to (I kid you not) be institutionalized after his first semester. His first week of college, his roommate physically kicked him out of his room because his intensity was too much to handle (he was the kind of guy who would snap your head off if you even spoke to him while he was studying). Then, shortly thereafter, he swung wildly in the other direction and became a full-blown alcoholic (not going to class at all).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Doesn't his design seem to contradict evolution? Why are tree leaves flat if that arrangement really is so much less efficient?
http://cleantechnica.com/2008/09/17/12-year-old-boy-invents-new-type-of-solar-cell/ includes a link to the press kit. the other link is the same.
I'm thinking this boy is damn good a plagiarizing more than anything else. http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/fetch.jsp?LANG=ENG&DBSELECT=PCT&SERVER_TYPE=19-10&SORT=41238067-KEY&TYPE_FIELD=256&IDB=0&IDOC=1349795&C=10&ELEMENT_SET=B&RESULT=1&TOTAL=1&START=1&DISP=25&FORM=SEP-0/HITNUM,B-ENG,DP,MC,AN,PA,ABSUM-ENG&SEARCH_IA=US2006007290&QUERY=(WO%2Fwo2007040594)+ http://www.ip2biz.com/Offerings/ProofCoProjects.asp#ThreeDSolarCells http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?id=1337
I'm going for a beer and a shag... ...both things that he won't be enjoying for a while.
Smartass.
PS. Please can I have some for my roof?
Wow, your sig and comment are diametrically opposed to one another. Have you been taking your meds?
It sounds like what got you the problem that almost nobody wants to learn in school any more, eh? Learn the value of being a prom queen who'll either marry a millionaire (stiff competition there, though) or be a waitress for the rest of your days, and be proud of that. Or learn to be value of being the jock who _might_ one day get lucky and get into a minor league sports team, but most likely will operate a gas pump or maybe unload crates at Wall-Mart.
Let's face it, in life you'll almost invariably hit lower than you aim. If you already aim low, you'll hit even lower. Starting from being nothing(*) and being proud and content with what you _already_ are (my emphasis) is a recipe for failure.
(*) and being mommy and daddy's "special" darling doesn't count there. If that's all you are and aim no higher, you'll eventually grow out of that and with _nothing_.
As for the middlers, I'll call bullshit on that feel-good fairy-tale. Historically the "middlers" were the guys ploughing the field and being plundered by both armies in a war. From the Roman Kingdom (yes, they were that before being a Republic, which they were before becoming an Empire) to some time during the 19'th century, that's what some 80% of the population was doing: the mind-numbingly boring task of walking behind a plough behind an ox or horse, holding onto the handles. Dawn to dusk. That's how the acre was even defined: how much a peasant can plough from dawn to dusk.
Add some miners, craftsmen, mercenaries and the like, and that accounts for even more people.
To even have the chance to be the guy who tinkers with a genius's ideas until they work, you had to be one of the most privileged 5% or less. The middlers were at best those guys kneading hides in dog shit (yes, that's how tanning worked) for the leather straps your invention needed. Or while those top few percent were busy inventing a better gun, the middlers were fermenting shit with piss to make saltpetre for that gun. Or while those top few were figuring out how to make a gothic cathedral (no mean feat, given the lack of even a mathematical notation you'd use these days), the middlers were hauling square slabs of rock for it. Stable contribution to technological progress of that middler gang: zero point zero.
Valuable contributions, nevertheless, but spare me the bullshit self-fellatio that such middlers were what caused stable technological progress.
Now I'm not saying you should go depressed about your skills or anything. But do aim higher, or you'll never improve. And spare us and yourself the bullshit story in which it's perfectly ok to be an underachiever and proud of it, and how such underachieving middlers had jack shit to do with technological progress.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
500 * 0.05
25.00
a bong from a McDonald's cup.
I was front page news on High Times, all the international attention was very stressful, I think. I'm not really sure. What was I talking about?
ed duval the very last person
3D solar cells are standard fare in college introductory nanotech classes (or similar). This boy, no matter how young or smart he is, did not come up with the idea for three dimensional solar cells.
if you combine this with a rotating mirror you could vaporize a human target from space
movie anyone??? bueller???
the problem with using nanotubes for anything is that it is very difficult to control their creation, growth and alignment. Also, he probably used a specific nanotube for this and to mass produce it they would need a way to create nanotubes that are identical - same size, diameter, length, chirality, etc. If he could figure out this last part, it would be incredible, but the process of selecting nanotubes for this and then aligning them properly is extremely difficult and expensive since atomic force microscopy is needed to identify the properties of the nanotubes.
12 years wasted on proper science, you have yet about 80 years left to make some mistakes, try drugs, find your zero-point experience, earn your social quotient, and learn to give a shit about solar cells.
Do not trust this signature.
I wonder where young Master Yuan got the nanotubes for his project and who might have helped him.
Could it be that a family member works for a place that uses nanotubes?
If anyone RTFA, you'll see that he's not in 7th grade, he's in college. As can be seen from the dorm room background. The dorm room attire is basically a laptop, cheap boombox, and a loft bed. Maybe if that's all I had in my dorm room freshman year, and never got laid (not that I got laid my freshman year) and didn't party I could have done that too. (not a chance, but I think partying is more fun anyway)
I am highly dubious of a 500X improvement. I can almost bring myself to accept 500% (i.e. 5X) improvement, but with today's best cells in the 10% - 30% of visible light, and the (remaining) ozone layer stopping a good amount of the UV, I just can't see where there is that much extra energy to harvest if rated efficiencies are correct for current visible light photocells.
I would love to be proven wrong by an actual working model.
Even better, I'd like it to be manufacturable in bulk at comparable prices.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Unless this means that they're a blacker black, and not that they will generate 500X the power of other cells.
Of course, if they absorb 500X more energy, they will likely melt very quickly, so I'm still dubious of just what is being claimed here - and how much is just theory that won't play out in the end.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
if he could hammer an 8" spike through a board. Then he would have GF galore.
> Damn! I guess those people doing it should just stop, and give up the checks they're
> getting from the electric company for pumping more energy into the grid than they're
> pulling out. Bastards! They should know that it is impossible.
Yup. That is exactly what should happen. Stop the government subsidies these folks are leeching from the taxpayer so they can get the egoboo of being greener than thou. To actually run a house on the energy collected by a PV array you have to replace everything in it to be ultra low power, go totally ultrakill on the insulation and generally spend far more than you have any reasonable hope of recovering. And you still have to change your lifestyle to be constantly aware of energy consumption and available capacity, whcih is why almost every system is grid tied and few even have local storage capacity. No currently installed PV system makes economic sense if grid power is available if the subsidies are removed. PV does make sense in remote areas where the grid is unavailable or unreliable. It is possible that PV will get practical at some future point as prices drop, efficiency improves and appliances get more efficient. But it ain't now.
But the total bitch of it is that the second PV gets practical the Greens will turn on it just like they have every other 'green' tech they have pushed. You can even find greens agitating against geothermal!
Democrat delenda est
He did a calculation that showed that something which adsorbs more light is more efficient.
He'll find out soon enough that carbon nanotubes have some serious problems when you try and use them in solar cells. Also, solar cells already are 3D (the mars rovers' solar cells kick ass).
It is remarkable that a 12 year old made the connections he's made (I'm assuming he's latched onto the varying bandgaps of carbon nanotubes to increase the adsorption cross section of a solar cell... everyone gets excited by that idea, but "everyone" tends to be at least 20 when they think of it). I'd be thrilled to have him work in my lab when he's ready (I work with carbon nanotubes). It's a bit premature to say he's solving the world's energy needs.
I wonder whether we can use cosmic radiations or some invisible spectrum which can go through some new type of cells. So it can run 24/7.
(Sorry for changing the topic a bit)
> Nuke plants? Maybe some IFRs, but Solar Thermal is the real long term win.
No it isn't. Solar can't be the solution unless we were willing to fill a substantial fraction of the surface area of the earth with collectors and the greens will never allow that. Remember that we aren't just talking about replacing current electrical use. If we are serious about getting off the carbon powered economy we have to have enough additional capacity to plug our entire transportation system into the electric grid. Solar just isn't up to that load, at least earth based collectors aren't.
The only way to get power in that kind of quantity is harnessing the atom. Fission for now, fusion as soon as possible. And unlike all these gaywad green energy sources that are possible but not actually invented yet, we already know how to build safe reliable nuke plants and we have ample reserves of fuel to last until we get the breakthrough on fusion.
Democrat delenda est
I mean, what else could explain it except for that clause you sign when working for any major company that any device you design while in their employment is their property?
Is there a emoticon for rolling eyes I can use?
anyone wonder if he had any help with this thing? wonder what dad does for a living?
This is about your signature, not the post directly. I checked out your referral to the Bible Gateway and they don't have an English version of the Hebrew Bible. Since there are significant differences in the translations into English from the original Hebrew between the Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant versions (not to mention some of the differences recognized by Islam, which also considers these books to be holy), why not an English version of the Hebrew Bible? The JPS 1917 translation is available for free at http://www.mechon-mamre.org/e/et/et0.htm
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? If not now, when?
From reading the article, this sounds like only a proposal--not an invention.
There's no working prototype, and though the principles would seem to be sound, it's not even immediately known if one can be possibly made--much less mass-produced for any reasonable costs.
~
then puberty kicks in and he's hanging drunk in bar grabbing girls asses. what a shame.
They would like to add classical music/scoring to your live act...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Anyone for pooling for a patent troll on this stuff?
The key is large rocks and properly accelerating the cats.
If you pick a big enough rock, the problem of accelerating the cat takes care of itself. :)
Tweet, tweet.
It seemed rather familiar to me, so a quick google search came up with a similar article from last year.
Additionally, there is an Australian company that is marketing a SolarCube, which looks like it uses conventional lenses to produce the same effect. The initial design was featured on the New Inventors in 2005
A game has objectives and is competitive, anything else is just play
Back when I was 10, during the Lunar Space Program, I designed a whole series of solar cell methods, which NASA ended up patenting.
It was a gift.
Now, admittedly, it took me a lot longer to do accurate sketches then, with breakaway and cut designs, in pencil on foolscape (print end rolls from newspapers), using just a basic ruler and protractor.
One of the reasons why NASA holds so many basic patents is that many people did the same thing, in various fields.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I sprayed root beer.
Thanks for that.
DRM: Terminator crops for your mind!
His parents are probably professional solar panel engineers or something like that.
No, his parents are engineers at Intel. And as TFA I linked to says he has other engineers as well as professors mentoring him.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
Anyone running a sweepstake on the date that someone else patents this and files the first patent troll lawsuit?
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
As a student, I hope to be the next Bill Gates of the world. This is amazing that this happened, and in the future I expect it to happen again, but using my software. Seriously though, I don't feel bad about this, this shows that we aren't stupid. But I do doodle in class, sometimes real things, and sometimes actual doodles. Do I plan on making some of them? Yeah. Will I? I hope. When will I? When I know how. And this kid knew how now, so he did it now. It wouldn't matter this much if he was out of college, but the fact that he's twelve is the amazing part. And I am in middle school, and if I happen to make something incredible, so be it. It will still be incredible is I was 10 or 20. The fact is that he did it. Go Wii and PS3!!!
Will it run linux?
Our attitudes towards raising educated kids, and supporting the really smart ones, has changed a lot since I was in 7th grade. We didn't even have anything like the MESA club this kid was part of.
I don't know about this MESA club but when I was in school more than 30 years ago I was in a model rocketry club. What I found weird is that this was in Mass but when I move back to Florida, an hour's drive from the Cape, there wasn't any club like it. Because it's close to the Cape I'd expect at least some people to be interested in rocketry.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
there is only one short term solution. We need an Apollo type national commitment to building Nuke plants.
Nuclear isn't a short term solution, unless you call 5 years short term and can build one that quickly. However a 5 megawatt wind turbine can be erected in weeks. Erect 20 a month and in one year you'll add more than a gigawatt of power*. Apply an Apollo project to wind and you could produce more power quicker than you could with nuclear.
As Texas oil Billionaire T Boone Pickens has intimated in his plan for wind farms, the Rocky Mountains alone contain enough potential wind energy to supply almost if not all of the 48 contiguous states with electricity. If that's not enough all along the Pacific coast then through AZ and NM to Texas there's more. Then there's the Mid Atlantic states on up to Maine. For instance the wind potential between Cape Cod and Cape Hatteras is estimated to be 330 Gigawatts.
Quite simply wind beats nuclear.
Falcon
*I use 1 gigawatt because in California 4 reactors, 2 each in 2 power plants, generate 4.324 Gigawatts. That's just over a Gigawatt per reactor. It's the same in Alabama, 5 reactors generate just over 5 Gigawatts.
Should there be a Law?
Meanwhile, the runner up, is relegated to the sidelines despite inventing a potato battery 500 times as efficient as the average potato battery. :(
- RG>
Hey pal, this isn't a pleasantforest, so don't waste my time with pleasantries!
So you're telling me a 12-year-old designed something that the most brilliant scientists in the world (many of whom are experts in solar cell technology) couldn't? I'd put money on this technology already being used in the military, but they couldn't very well say "it's a dumb idea" to him.
Nothing more than a feelgood story.
Homonyms are fun!
You're driving your car, but they're riding their bikes there.
Someone will patent the idea and then sue the kid...
"'My next step is to talk to manufacturers to see if they will build a working prototype,' Yuan said. 'If the design works in a real test stage, I want to find a company to manufacture and market it.'"
So, basically, there's no prototype yet, and this is just a concept design. And it might not even work. And there's no mention of the cost, as compared to current solar cells. When there is a working prototype, there's a company which will make them, and the cost is known (or at least estimated), I'll be interested. Until than, this is just another story which focuses on a supposed prodigy to increase media attention on probable vaporware.
Everything is subjective.
Thank you for sharing this very interesting story. There is, however, a clarification that needs to be added. The 3D solar cell was invented several years ago at the Georgia Tech Research Institute by our team of world-class scientists and engineers. The Georgia Tech Research Institute http://www.gtri.gatech.edu/ has been making 3D solar cell prototypes of this design since 2004. You can read about the work in our April 2007 news release online at http://www.gtri.gatech.edu/casestudy/3d-solar-cells-boost-efficiency. Our work has patents pending in the US and abroad. We have also published our research widely in an number of highly regarded research journals including the Journal of Applied Physics, Journal of Materials and Carbon. The 3D Solar Cell has the potential to be breakthrough in the solar industry. The global and exclusive license to the 3D Solar Cell intellectual property is held by IP2BIZ in Atlanta http://www.ip2biz.com/Offerings/ProofCoProjects.a... The license is currently for sale to any firm that can further develop, manufacture and bring it to market. It is wonderful to see a student taking a real interest in science and math. We are also happy to hear of Williamâ(TM)s interest in 3D solar cells. We encourage him to contact the Georgia Tech Research Institute so he may be connected with our lead researcher (Dr. Jud Ready), who would love for him to visit our laboratories to see how we create our 3D solar cells. Who knows â" maybe William can contribute to our groundbreaking work.
I wish more companies would use the foveon x3 than just Sigma, I looking at you Canon, and that Foveon made a full frame sensor.
It's not really the same. This kid has towers on the cell to absorb different wavelengths.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
...500 times more light absorption than currently achieved. I'm extremely skeptical.
Photo enthusiasts wouldn't be too suprised:
2^9=512. This is 9 f-stops on the aperture dial.
"500 times more light absorption" sounds more interesting than "9 f-stops of light."
Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber called, and wants his score for Cats back...
New mod option wanted: -1 DrunkenRambling
the article seems to indicate that 2D PV cells only capture visable light. ... out of order?
and that his 3D cell is able to also capture ultra violet light, which is a much broader spectrum (energy band) than the relativly narrow width of visable light.
am i missing something? as all you nay say'ers who are saying "how can you get 500x more" seem to be missing this?
to totally debase this idea while completely ignoring the primary theory seems a bit
Look at this http://www-stage.gatech.edu/news-room/flash/CNTpv.html and compare to image behind boys back at http://www.katu.com/news/local/28432984.html Read tomlsmith replay. P.S. sorry for my bad english
500x the absorption does seem quite impossible. However, it's possible that what was actually meant is "500 times less energy is not absorbed" which is a number that theoretically could be as large as you like.
If you assume a cell is 10% efficient (they're actually rather above that now) then its loss percentage is 90%. Reducing that by a factor of 500 would mean losses of only 0.18%, or an absorption efficiency of 99.82% (which is vastly in excess of anything we have today).
While it's still an astoundingly large number, it at least avoids breaking the laws of math and physics, and requires only a single, simple misinterpretation by a journalist who quite possibly never took any college-level math or physics. I know people who make that kind of mistake all the time. Hell, I've done it myself on occasion.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I feel sorry for this kid - can't his (by insinuation pushy-as-hell) parents just let him have a childhood. "Oh, but he loves particle physics..." Get real.
Coulda swore the the solar cells on my calculator had some third dimension. Otherwise we could stack infinite layers of them on top of each other.
And i suppose the new solar cells also go to 11.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Next a third grader will make an artificial sun, or make an energy field that will fix the ozone layer.
Read the news report comments, the kid stole the idea from Georgia Tech research, it looks like he even copied their diagrams!! How can the Davidson Institute give him 25K for stealing existing research!
I'm sure he did, it was the subplot for half the last series. Not with nanotubes though.
They were. However....
The diagram behind the kid mentions CURRENT 3D solar cells, not his invention.
Likely, he furthered the current state of the art (as all scientists do). Took the GTech concepts and went beyond.
Or maybe it is a blatant infringement.
We can't tell from the contect that one fragmented photograph provides.
So withold judgement, please.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
on building underground waterproof bunkers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hill_60_(Western_Front)
sorry it's not funny, but its the true source of the competition thing you don't get
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The student stole this from a researcher at Georgia Tech. Just so you know.... google it!
I know, no one reads the article (and I haven't read all the comments, but here's the real key line:
-----
Current solar cells are flat and can only absorb visible light," he said. "I came up with an innovative solar cell that absorbs both visible and UV light
-----
All the people who flunked math in comments above need to note that he is increasing the spectrum to absorb.
And If I can add a punch line ... Excellent way to take advantage of HFCs destroying the ozone layer!
story645: Can I believe it having gone to a shiny magnet (US world news #20) high school and then honor's program deal... because for me (and plenty of others) we're motivated enough that parental interference does more harm than good. Most of the kid's I know have very hands off parents (hell, a few have parent's who weren't even in the city/state/country) and it doesn't matter
May we assume that the "smart innovative kids" in your "US world news #20 honor's program" skipped the part about how to turn English nouns from their singular forms into their plural forms?
(people that throw rocks at cats or vice versa, at ANY age , are pschychopaths who need help, while being locked away in the meantime.. sick to hear such a responses after such a hopefull news.)
For the doubters, no matter how sceptical you might be, the kid might just have been so smart to look at all the stages in converting the energy and tackled more of the energy losses.
using the same light going through multiple cells is still not as effective as capturing more energy with just 1 better energy absorbing cell..
by a person who doesn't want to be bothered with another account, or as it's called here.. an anonimous coward (what a hatred)
Why is it that an asshole troll of some flagger/tagger/moderator can mod me as -1 off-topic when another person making the SAME GENERAL line of thought is *not*. This is further exemplifying the unfairness of allowing pricks to roam around on /. slamming down on people they view as a foe. Anytime someone is knocking someone down, that person should automatically be marked as their target's foe so they cannot get away with constantly off-topic-marking someone with whom they have an axe to grind.
If someone is marked off-topic, via a flag, then the flag mechanism for that thread/article should aggregate ALL the same-marked comments so that they can be matched and then flaggers/moderators behind the abuse can be identified and reprimanded. I PURPOSELY inserted my comment near or beneath the one I was commenting on, and some bastard felt it crucial to ding me anyway.
Worse, when general topics come up, invariably someone forks it and because so much inertia is behind an enlightened or funny comment that it does NOT get marked off-topic. A master /warning: diverging toward off-topic flag should be assigned so that those wanting to STAY on topic can see the indentation or color or flashing instead of having to wade through 2 or 5 pages to find something ON-TOPIC rather than funny to attach to.
Whoever this bastard is is lucky i'm not omnipotent...
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
The recent note on the avalanche effect and work on bringing light to the edges of windows and putting cells only on the edge have given promise that the watts per dollar will be going up, even if the watt per area figure does not rise as fast as hoped. Another new direction is printing cheap low efficiency cells on windows and possibly even clothing.
<cough>twat</cough>
Here are a few data points and links about the 3D Solar Cell, which was invented by Dr. Jud Ready of GA Tech in March 2005. See http://www.gatech.edu/newsroom/release.html?id=1337
The 3D Solar Cell has the potential to be breakthrough in the solar industry. The global and exclusive license to the 3D Solar Cell intellectual property is held by IP2BIZ in Atlanta http://www.ip2biz.com/Offerings/ProofCoProjects.asp#ThreeDSolarCells The license is for sale to an firm that can further develop, manufacture and bring it to market.
What is very interesting is if you look at the animation of Dr. Ready's solar cell, at http://www-stage.gatech.edu/news-room/flash/CNTpv.html you'll notice that the graphics in the photo of this Oregon boy's presentation are the spitting image of Dr. Ready's.
Dr. Ready's PCT patent application WO/2007/040594 was published in April 2007 at http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/fetch.jsp?LANG=ENG&DBSELECT=PCT&SERVER_TYPE=19-10&SORT=41238067-KEY&TYPE_FIELD=256&IDB=0&IDOC=1349795&C=10&ELEMENT_SET=B&RESULT=1&TOTAL=1&START=1&DISP=25&FORM=SEP-0/HITNUM,B-ENG,DP,MC,AN,PA,ABSUM-ENG&SEARCH_IA=US2006007290&QUERY=%28WO%2fwo2007040594%29+