Energy Inventions PDF Article

Energy Inventions   © 2018 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Permission granted to purchaser to photocopy for classroom use. Image Credits: © 2014 Little Sun...

Energy Inventions   © 2018 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Permission granted to purchaser to photocopy for classroom use. Image Credits: © 2014 Little Sun The Little Sun lamp has a light bulb on the front and a solar panel on the back. Energy Gathering Energy from the Sun When Olafur Eliasson and Frederik Ottesen Inventions heard that more than 1 billion people on Earth don’t have access to electricity, they wanted to help. In many places, lack of electricity Many people around the world don’t have easy means students can’t study after dark and access to the energy they need to power lights, families can’t cook after the sun goes down. phones, and other electrical devices. There It’s also harder for doctors and nurses to may not be an electrical grid nearby, or they treat patients without good lighting. Some may not have electrical wires to bring power people light their homes by burning a type of from the electrical grid to their homes—or oil called kerosene, but kerosene is expensive they may have electrical wires, but the nearest and produces thick, black smoke that causes power plant may only provide energy part of lung disease—and it can cause houses to the time, leaving people in the dark when it catch fire. Eliasson and Ottesen decided to doesn’t work. These people may not have much invent a solar lamp that would provide light money, so they can’t just buy lots of batteries without costing a lot of money, polluting the to power their lights. They face an energy air, or causing fires. Their solution? The Little problem: they need access to cheap, reliable Sun lamp, a sun­-shaped light with a light bulb electricity. All over the world, people from on one side and a solar panel on the other. professional engineers and energy scientists to students, makers, and inventors are working The Little Sun lamp uses energy to provide light to solve this problem. They have designed to people who need it, but the Little Sun doesn’t ways to provide portable light in places where make its own energy. To run, the lamp needs to electrical power isn’t always available. In this get energy from somewhere else. In this case, article, you’ll read about a few of them. that source of energy is the sun. The solar panel on the back of the lamp converts light energy Energy Inventions 1 from the sun into potential energy that can be stored in a battery and used later to make the light bulb shine. Little Sun lamps charge in the sun during the day and provide light at night, allowing people to study, cook, work, and take care of other things even after the Energy Inventions   © 2018 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Permission granted to purchaser to photocopy for classroom use. Image Credit: Maddalena Valeri © 2012 Little Sun sun sets. They’re inexpensive, don’t pollute, and don’t cause fires. Eliasson and Ottesen’s plan turned out to be a good one—since 2012, their company has sold 200,000 lamps to people who don’t have electricity. The Little Sun lamp allows people with no electricity Gathering Energy from in their homes to work when it’s dark outside. the Human Body The sun is one source of energy in places where there’s no electrical grid; another source may be closer than you think—the human body! The human body contains energy. Most of that energy is used to keep us alive and active, but some of it can be captured and used for other things. Just ask Ann Makosinski, a young inventor from British Columbia, Canada. At the age of 15, after hearing of a friend in the Philippines who was failing her classes because her home didn’t have light to study by, Makosinski invented a flashlight that uses the heat of the human hand When she was only 15, Ann Makosinski invented a flashlight that uses the heat of the human hand to power a light bulb. Her flashlight, called the for power. Hollow Flashlight, has a handle made of special tiles and nothing but air inside. The tiles get energy from the human hand and convert it into electrical energy, which powers a light bulb. The Hollow Flashlight doesn’t have a battery, or even an on/off switch—it lights up as soon as the user picks it up. That makes it lightweight, reliable, and cheap to own: users of the Hollow Flashlight never have to buy flashlight batteries or worry about their old batteries running out of power. Comparing Solutions Using solar energy and capturing energy from humans are just some of the exciting ways people are using science to solve energy problems. There is no perfect solution, however. Solar energy relies on the sun and doesn’t work as 2 Energy Inventions Energy Inventions   © 2018 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Permission granted to purchaser to photocopy for classroom use. Image Credits: (t) Edward Kinsman/Science Source/Getty Images; (b) Shutterstock well in the dark or on cloudy days. For example, if you were using your Little Sun to read at night and it ran out of energy, you would need to wait for the sun to come up so that more energy could be captured and transferred to the battery in your light. Just imagine if the next day was very cloudy! Your energy system would not be able to capture very much energy from the sun, so your light would not stay on for long. The Little Sun lamp and the Hollow Flashlight have something in common: they get energy Solar panels don’t work as well at night or on from somewhere else instead of making it cloudy days. themselves. In fact, that’s true of every object in the universe. Engineers must think about energy sources as they design their inventions. They must find an energy source that will do a good job of transferring energy to the object. The Little Sun lamp gets energy from the sun, while the Hollow Flashlight gets energy from the human body. There are many other possible energy sources to consider. For example, some devices transfer kinetic energy (energy of motion) from wind, water, or even people to power devices! There isn’t a single right way to provide energy when there’s no electrical grid available, and each source has its strengths and drawbacks. Which energy source would YOU choose? Energy Inventions 3