Article

2008-09-19 Science & Technology

12 Year Old Boy Invents New Type of Solar Cell

Archived material is restricted to Rantburg regulars and members. If you need access email fred.pruitt=at=gmail.com with your nick to be added to the members list. There is no charge to join Rantburg as a member.

Posted by Tarzan Angeter7567 2008-09-19 00:00|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

#1 Playing with Cheetah?

Posted by Glenmore">Glenmore 2008-09-19 10:07|| 2008-09-19 10:07|| Front Page Top

#2 Couldn't find a description on how this thing works and how to build my own. He lives in Beaverton, Oregon near where I do. The sun doesn't shine here but once in a blue moon. Mostly, we have clouds and showers. Inventing a super duper sun-to-electricity converter is about as useful to us as inventing super xray vision glasses for a blind person would be.

Posted by Richard of Oregon 2008-09-19 10:31|| 2008-09-19 10:31|| Front Page Top

#3 Every now and then you find some kid who is so dang talented in some subject that you know schooling is just going to be wasted on him. His future is predestined, and anything he does other than his genius is wasting his time.

I once met a gutter punk who I just knew was a heck of a lot smarter than about anyone else. He had dropped out of high school out of mind numbing boredom. The only teacher he liked was one that gave him extremely hard professional written tests to do during class.

Well, I brow beat the punk for two weeks before I persuaded him to go to the local university student services office, practically dragging him there.

After they gave him a GED that he practically aced, he ended up getting a full engineering scholarship to Stanford. The only follow-up I ever got was that he wrote an ex-girlfriend objecting that most of the other students, and at least several of the faculty, were unmotivated dim-wits.

But there were at least some smart people there, so he was happy.

Posted by Anonymoose 2008-09-19 11:47|| 2008-09-19 11:47|| Front Page Top

#4 Too bad he couldn't use the I-Red part of the spectrum.

Posted by mhw 2008-09-19 12:21|| 2008-09-19 12:21|| Front Page Top

#5 The bands for IR go from 700nm to 1mm, which is extremely long when the nano towers that receive the light are built for the visible light spectrum, 380nm to 750nm, and the UV spectrum, 10nm to 400nm.

And it is probably a lot easier and cheaper to make small nano towers.

Posted by Anonymoose 2008-09-19 14:18|| 2008-09-19 14:18|| Front Page Top

#6 You've got to admire this kid's inventiveness.

Posted by JohnQC 2008-09-19 16:24|| 2008-09-19 16:24|| Front Page Top

#7 William Yuan.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2008-09-19 16:33|| 2008-09-19 16:33|| Front Page Top