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> A solution to this problem came from an unlikely source: Chen’s 16-year-old daughter, who at the time was working on a science fair project in which she const

> A solution to this problem came from an unlikely source: Chen’s 16-year-old daughter, who at the time was working on a science fair project in which she constructed a makeshift greenhouse from simple materials, including bubble wrap. “She was able to heat it to 160 degrees Fahrenheit, in winter!” Chen says. “It was very effective.” Love it when discoveries are made by accident.

zellyn 10y ago
That doesn't sound like an accident: it sounds like she considered the problem, and thought of a solution, on purpose.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  The researcher having a live demonstration of its effectiveness was serendipitous.
- semi-extrinsic 10y ago
  I hate to be the negative guy, but isn't this the obvious, standard, well known way of building a greenhouse? You want to prevent hot air from escaping, you put up something that contains the air. An actual greenhouse doesn't really rely on "the greenhouse effect" of allowing visual light to pass but being opaque to infrared. It's all about preventing hot air from rising. This can be easily seen in polyethylene windowed greenhouses, which get just as hot as glass greenhouses, even though polyethylene is just as transparent to IR as to visible light. That part of the piece seemed like something the MIT press office coaxed out of them to get a human interest angle TBH. Really, most of their improvement over the 2014 version seems to come from the spectrally-selective absorber coating, which is a lot more expensive than bubble wrap. So they say this solution might be ~10x cheaper than existing solar destilling plants, but they also say it will need replacement ~10x as often. So depending on exactly how the numbers work out, this might mean slightly cheaper, more labor-intensive desalinisation plants, but we're not covering any deserts just yet.
DiabloD3 10y ago
I wish I knew how this worked. I'd love to build one myself.

zellyn 10y ago

That doesn't sound like an accident: it sounds like she considered the problem, and thought of a solution, on purpose.

maxerickson 10y ago
The researcher having a live demonstration of its effectiveness was serendipitous.
semi-extrinsic 10y ago
I hate to be the negative guy, but isn't this the obvious, standard, well known way of building a greenhouse? You want to prevent hot air from escaping, you put up something that contains the air. An actual greenhouse doesn't really rely on "the greenhouse effect" of allowing visual light to pass but being opaque to infrared. It's all about preventing hot air from rising. This can be easily seen in polyethylene windowed greenhouses, which get just as hot as glass greenhouses, even though polyethylene is just as transparent to IR as to visible light. That part of the piece seemed like something the MIT press office coaxed out of them to get a human interest angle TBH. Really, most of their improvement over the 2014 version seems to come from the spectrally-selective absorber coating, which is a lot more expensive than bubble wrap. So they say this solution might be ~10x cheaper than existing solar destilling plants, but they also say it will need replacement ~10x as often. So depending on exactly how the numbers work out, this might mean slightly cheaper, more labor-intensive desalinisation plants, but we're not covering any deserts just yet.

DiabloD3 10y ago

I wish I knew how this worked. I'd love to build one myself.