admin answers:

…to mimic or emulate what is found in nature

The last I researched, the pre-industrial world did not plug their cell phones into the grid expecting them to be re-charged, electric street lights, and so forth. Nature has no grid infrastructure that supplies energy for a wide assortment of uses and devices. We humans, on the other hand, are a part of the world’s ecosystems and thus a natural entity or “nature” in our own right.

When you mention “toxic chemicals” do remember that “nature” is full of all sorts of toxins of both the organic and inorganic type. Some are byproducts of an ecosystem’s entiy or an entity’s processes, some simply are, and some are generated or created by an ecosystem’s entity for use as a tool or protective measure. On the other hand, we humans have quite a history of making/using chemicals/compounds/materials which may or may not be found in nature long after we know they are toxic to ourselves, other entities in our ecosystems, and our ecosystems themselves as we know them.

I don’t know the specifics upon which solar power is defined as biomimicry. Certainly plants turn solar power into a different energy force that supports their way of life. Although, I don’t particularly remember even the 1950’s sci-fi flicks addressing the concept of plants powering an electrical or other grid for the sharing of the energy they harness from the sun. I certainly don’t remember Dick Tracy’s wrist phone being charged on a grid powered through photosynthesis! Solar panels do convert the energy from the sun’s rays into a different form for ecosystem use. – They may not be “natural” but the houses and apartments we live in, and their contents, are certainly habitats that most of us require for a happy, healthy life.

admin answers:

Interesting project. Radio shack sells a couple in the form (wires already attatched) that would be easy for a beginner to play with. Go into any store and ask for one and they’ll show you where they are.

The thing you’re going to want to measure is probably current, rather than voltage. The voltage is more or less just a function of the materials the cell is made of (about .5V), while the current is proportional to the solar flux. A cheap multimeter will make this measurement by just putting it across the wires of the cell.

What you should find is that the power coming out of a cell varies with the sine of the angle of incidence.

Electrical power, in watts, is the volts times the amps. So you would multiply .5volts times lets say for example 50milliamps with direct on sun and get 25milliwatts.

Also, you will be measuring the amount of solar energy CONVERTED, not absorbed. To measure the amount absolbed, you would need to know the amoubnt of solar energy incident on the cell, but not reflected, and that isn’t so easy.

admin answers:

You likely don’t have the space to build a nuclear generator and provide adequate shielding. The uranium in a nuclear plant is basically a heat source, used to heat either water or liquid sodium which then drives an electromagnetic turbine. So you need room to put the turbine. Liquid sodium is tricky to handle — it tends to catch fire when exposed to water — and water used in a nuclear plant turns to steam, and requires some containment vessels.

You also need a place for the water or sodium to cool off after it drives the turbine. A commercial water-cooled nuclear plant uses a cooling tower on the order of 100m high (about like a 30-floor building). For residential use you don’t need a 100m tower (nor would the landlord let you install it through your roof) but you will still need some place to let the water or sodium cool.

In 1994 a boy scout who lived near Detroit, Michigan collected americium from smoke detectors and thorium from lantern mantles and built a sort of working nuclear reactor, but the radioactivity spread across his neighborhood and he never got working power out of it. He did, however, attract the attention of the federal government, which took away the radioactive materials and his mother’s tool shed (which had become radioactive) and some other things that had become radioactive.

If you don’t in fact have weapons grade uranium, but only commercial uranium, then you may need to enrich the stuff (meaning to sort out the U-235 from the U-238), because the U-235 is fissionable and the U-238 is not. To do this properly you need the facility to work with uranium hexafluoride (a gas) and in particular to run it through a centrifuge, then to remove the fluorine from the uranium. Fluorine is toxic and corrosive and eats just about everything except fluorspar. It’s difficult to handle and store, and you’ll run into major problems trying to combine it with the uranium and then to dissociate it from the uranium.

Overall you’re going to be much happier spending your money on solar plates. Sorry!

admin answers:

You can do just about anything if you spend enough time,effort AND money .

The real questions are, “Is it practicle? And Is it worth it?”

If you don’t mind having a tank of Cow S hit fermenting in your back yard you can certainly harvest methane to operate a generator. If you are only going to run the generator ocassionally so that you can save less than a dollars worth of electricity, then I am afraid that the economics just don’t make such a project worth it. (There is a reason you don’t see many of these systems in common use)