Doped Silicon & Hopping Electrons

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Doped Silicon & Hopping Electrons

Ready to soak up some more solar energy? Last week we looked at Sandia Labs’ 8-acre heliostat field, in which hundreds of huge mirrors bounce the desert light onto a single tower. Their cumulative reflected light adds up to 400 suns’ worth of radiation, enough to produce 1 megawatt of electricity via an industrial thermal generator. Whew!

Today we’re shifting scales from the massive to the subatomic: instead of measuring energy in suns, we’ll measure it in photons. This is the level on which photovoltaic cells operate, one photon at a time energizing one electron at a time. How do solar panels convert rays of sunlight into a usable electrical current?

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Here Comes the Sun

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Here Comes the Sun

As a transplant from gray-skied Seattle, I might never get over how sun-drenched things are here in Albuquerque. With over 320 days of clear sunshine every year, New Mexico is officially one of the sunniest states in the union, a distinction it owes both to its southerly latitude and its dry desert atmosphere.

That’s pure gold streaming in from above, not just for our moods but for the state’s energy sector. While I’m slipping on sunglasses to block out the glare, many New Mexicans are installing solar panels to soak in all the rays they can get. How are they capturing all that sunlight and harnessing its powers for good?

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Hot Air Doesn't Rise

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Hot Air Doesn't Rise

You may have heard the maxim that “warm air rises.” False: no matter its temperature, air is drawn downward by Earth’s gravity. There’s no force sending it toward the sky—unless something heavier pushes in with a force greater than its weight, displacing it upward.

So what’s heavier than warm air? What gives those beautiful balloons their lift?

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A Dash of Cosmic Radiation

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A Dash of Cosmic Radiation

Earth’s atmosphere offers us more than breathable air: it’s humanity’s security blanket, filtering a steady barrage of cosmic radiation from space. 

These cosmic “rays” are actually atomic nuclei, and they rain in from supernovae and distant galaxies at speeds of up to 667,934,162 mph (99.6% the speed of light)! 

If the atmosphere offers us ground-dwellers protection from all these space particles, are high-elevation dwellers subjected to more potent cosmic radiation? 

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