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Teenager invents solar panel made from human hair
- unwind 17y agoHuh ... Does the Daily Mail generally publish hoaxes?
- jacquesm 17y agoYour use of a question mark at the end of a statement is confusing.
- psyklic 17y agoMeaning ... they do?
- jacquesm 17y agoThe daily mail is known for attention grabbing and publishing wildly inaccurate stories.
- jgranby 17y ago"Attention grabbing"? It's a tabloid paper. That's what tabloid papers are for. As for "wildly inaccurate", it simply has quite a strong bias, but so do lots of papers. The Guardian is no less partisan. I wouldn't buy a copy of the Mail, but I'm tired of reading fatuous name-calling of this sort from people who've never read the paper.
- jacquesm 17y agoSo, you wouldn't buy a copy and yet you claim others have never read it ? To put the guardian and the daily mail in the same column is doing serious injustice to the guardian. How about faceless aliens spotted at Wimbledon ? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1031062/Faceless-aliens-spotted-crowd-Wimbledon.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1031062/Faceless-ali... Or this one ? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-491757/First-pictures-reveal-success-life-saving-surgery-toddler-limbs.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-491757/First-picture... or this ? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1160904/Research-brains-God-spot-reveals-areas-brain-involved-religious-belief.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1160904/Resea... I rest my case.
- yangyang 17y agoThe second story you link to was also covered in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/nov/10/india.international http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/nov/10/india.internatio... The third was covered in the Independent, a (former) broadsheet which I think most would consider as respectable as the Guardian: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/belief-and-the-brains-god-spot-1641022.html http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/belief-and-the-bra... [edit] And the first story was covered in the Telegraph, another broadsheet: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2238138/Faceless-figures-cause-a-stir-at-Wimbledon-Harrods-and-Elton-Johns-ball.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/2238... The news in the Mail might be a bit hyped but it's not "wildly inaccurate". I don't read it either, and wouldn't, but it's not exactly The Daily Sport.
- jacquesm 17y agore. the second story: Indeed, but the pictures were left out. Maybe someone had that rare quality called tact ?
- yangyang 17y agoTact has nothing to do with accuracy, which was what you were commenting on. Tabloids by their nature print many more photos.
- jacquesm 17y agoJust in case: http://www.dollymix.tv/2008/05/how_the_daily_mail_misrepresen.html http://www.dollymix.tv/2008/05/how_the_daily_mail_misreprese... http://5cc.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-daily-mail-lies-about-immigration_25.html http://5cc.blogspot.com/2007/05/how-daily-mail-lies-about-im... Of course, now you can say that's just two examples, and then I can go back and find another 10, and so on.
- GavinB 17y agoThe "faceless aliens" story is about real people walking around with masks on. The story itself points that out: Close inspection of the pictures rules out an alien invasion - small perforations around the eye areas of the masks allow the people beneath to see the world outside. It then goes on to speculate that they're part of a viral marketing campaign or celebrities in disguise. Lightweight and lowbrow, sure, but they aren't just making up tabloid lies.
- NathanKP 17y agoI think it must be a hoax.
- onreact-com 17y agoYes, it's a hoax. See here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=817099 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=817099
- chaosprophet 17y agoHmmmm... If that works and is going to be used for lighting, then combining it with a pulse width modulator of about 50pc duty cycle should double the supply duration.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]
- brk 17y agoThis doesn't make any sense. It costs (according to the article) $38US to produce about 18W of electricity, a little over $2/W. I'm currently buying solar panels from China for $1.85/W US in small quantities, and they generally throw in the charge controllers as well. The article also implies that the hair needs to be replaced at some regular interval. Hardly newsworthy.
- kragen 17y agoWhere do you get your panels? http://www.wholesalesolar.com/solar-panels.html http://www.wholesalesolar.com/solar-panels.html lists prices from about US$3 to about US$10 per watt for panels in the 100-200W range and nothing below 100W, and http://www.solarbuzz.com/Moduleprices.htm http://www.solarbuzz.com/Moduleprices.htm has this lovely graph by month up in the US$4.40 range. I see http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/solar_panels.htm lists some panels for US$1.85 per watt, but the discrepancy is worrying.
- anigbrowl 17y agoWell, you expect the prototype to be more expensive. This should be trivially easy to test.
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- kragen 17y ago£23 ≈ US$38. At 18W that's US$2.11 per watt. That is indeed about half the price of silicon solar panels last I checked. I have no knowledge of these properties of melanin, so I don't know if this is a hoax.
- ars 17y agoThat's the price of the parts, but does not take into account the cost of labor to manufacture it, or to acquire the hair.
- electromagnetic 17y agoPrice of hair really varies depending on the quality required. If it's being mulched down to make the commercial solar panels, then it would likely cost next to nothing. However if you need high quality, long undamaged strands it's going to cost you, because you're going to be competing with an existing market (wig, mannequin and certain dolls are typically made with all real hair), which will drive prices up significantly. I believe the ultimate ideal for this would be to make the hair easily replaceable by a person. Quite literally grow your hair X inches long, cut, hold out straight and clip into place. This is likely to be sold out in poorer countries where people haven't handled technology and need a simple way to maintain it. However the countries that would typically require this are somewhat blessed by the near perfect black of their hair, because blond hair has little to no melanin and would be useless, even brown hair would reduce efficiency greatly.
- kingsley_20 17y agoThese guys own a big chunk of the world hair market: http://www.zimbio.com/TTD/articles/16/Hair+offering+at+tirupati http://www.zimbio.com/TTD/articles/16/Hair+offering+at+tirup... . As long as superstition and India's population remain stable, at least supply shouldn't be a problem :)
- startingup 17y agoHey, hey, let's go easy on the "superstition" part, OK? :) One man's religion is another man's superstition, I guess! And shaving off the hair is pretty harmless, as "superstitions" go -I mean, I got a lot of friends pretty non-superstitious types who shave off their hair here in the valley.
- ars 17y agoMeasuring when you have a florescent light so close to the wires is cheating - the ballast will induce current in them.
- electromagnetic 17y agoHardly, they're reading DC not AC, the ballast will induce a few milliwatts (at the max) in the wires and at 50~60HZ this will likely be within the margin of error on a hand-built solar panel anyway. (Ed: The electrical meter likely wouldn't detect the interference as AC is generally self-cancelling interference on a DC line, unless diodes are in use) Induction between two wires is exceptionally low. Unless the two copper wires share the same ferrite core, you'll get diddly squat out. Noise in an electrical signal, is very different from noise in power, which would require an actual imbalance in the AC outputs, IE a power plant running at 50HZ and one running at 55HZ will produce a very unstable power supply.
- joe_bleau 17y agoI would have thought the CFL ballast would run in the kHz range, not 50-60 Hz. The DMM appears to be reading voltage, and its input is probably pretty high impedance, so it may very well be sensitive to the hash from the ballast (the meter's input protection circuits may be rectifying the AC). I'm thinking hoax.
- ars 17y agoIt looks like just a small amount of hair on there. I wonder about the watts per area. I bet it would take a massive amount of surface area compared to regular solar cells. It's a very cool demonstration/proof of concept, but it's not practical for actual use. (But might have a niche in places where other sources of electricity are non-existent.)
- roc 17y agoI get the feeling a windmill and water tower might be a more durable, effective and all-around useful solution for those areas. Anyone who found it cost effective to wind human hair around terminals by hand every few months likely has more basic needs to be met than simple electricity.
- bcl 17y agoI don't know if the science behind this is sound, so assuming that it is: According to the article the panels are expected to be manufactured for 1/4 the cost of current panels of similar wattage. But it also says the hair "...lasts a few months", which means that they are much higher maintenance than silicon based panels which last at least 5 years with current designs. So TCO may be higher for the hair panels, especially if longer strands of hair are needed. As far as the validity of this goes, I need more hard facts before I can make a decision. Those hair strands aren't packed in there very tightly, so getting 9v/18W out of that panel is fairly unbelievable.
- electromagnetic 17y agoThe science is rather sound on this; melanin has been shown to produce a photosynthesis effect with ionizing radiation. Incidentally, this likely means the solar panels would actually be able to work at near maximum efficiency on partially cloudy days, even on a lightly clouded day it should still work well. It generally takes much less water to deflect visible light and reduce the efficiency of a silicon solar panel than it takes to absorb the UV that is producing power through the melanin. What I believe is important here is the melanin. If an efficient and stable way is found to manufacture a melanin-based solar panel, it could be used in a wider range than many traditional solar panels. I suppose the ideal would be to produce a traditional solar panel that is transparent to UV, allowing it to be caught in a melanin-based solar panel. In theory you could double the power output of a solar panel and extend its power production into cloudier periods.
- physcab 17y ago"It generally takes much less water to deflect visible light and reduce the efficiency of a silicon solar panel than it takes to absorb the UV that is producing power through the melanin." I'm confused by this statement. I'll try to clarify. Melanin's absorption spectrum can be found here: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jgd1000/melanin.html http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~jgd1000/melanin.html As you can see, it has high absorption from 300nm-700nm which is in the UV-Vis range. Similarly, silicon's absorption spectrum is here: http://www.wsi.tum.de/Research/StutzmanngroupE25/Research/Photovoltaics/tabid/220/Default.aspx http://www.wsi.tum.de/Research/StutzmanngroupE25/Research/Ph... So it absorbs much more in those wavelengths so that's why you're bound to get higher efficiencies. Alternatively, water's absorption spectrum can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Water_absorption_spectrum.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Water_absorption_spectrum.... Water does not have a high absorption in this region. So clouds will not absorb wavelengths in this region. And sorry to nitpick, but nothing deflects light. Light is absorbed, transmitted, and emitted. If it is emitted in the direction from which it came, its called reflectance.
- madh 17y agoWhat about refraction?
- doodyhead 17y agoI'm impressed in principle, but I'll believe it when I see an article in The NY Times, The Washington Post, or The Economist. That those reporters have chosen to ignore it gives me cause for concern.
- muon 17y agoThe news is only as good as it's source. I am sceptical about the claim. Would love to see this news in science magazines like New Scientist or Scientific America, before buying it.
- Gibbon 17y agoI posted another article on these solar panels several hours earlier: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=812551 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=812551 The bottom of the article includes a link to a research paper: http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1312/version/1/files/npre20071312-1.pdf http://precedings.nature.com/documents/1312/version/1/files/...
- duskwuff 17y agoThe photos of his "solar panel" look incredibly suspicious: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/09/08/article-0-06546E62000005DC-46_468x286.jpg http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/09/08/article-0-06546E62... http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/09/08/article-0-06546F9D000005DC-575_468x313.jpg http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/09/08/article-0-06546F9D... Single strands of hair strung randomly around a grid? This cannot possibly be an effective approach. But there's an even easier way to prove it's a hoax -- human hair is not an electrical conductor, and doesn't produce electricity under sunlight. (This takes about fifteen seconds to test for yourself with a multimeter.)
- craighyatt 17y agoDebunked here: http://sites.google.com/site/edwardcraighyatt/hairsolarpanelnepal http://sites.google.com/site/edwardcraighyatt/hairsolarpanel...