THE EFFECT OF COLOUR FILTERS ON SOLAR PANELS. Katie Fitzgerald Expo Project Grade 7

Transcription

1 THE EFFECT OF COLOUR FILTERS ON SOLAR PANELS Katie Fitzgerald Expo Project Grade 7

2 OBSERVATION By using a solar light instead of electricity, one can assist in lightening the load on our environment. By using solar panels, we do not pollute our environment and we lighten the impact of global warming. Different solar lights have different burning times.

3 SUNLIGHT Sunlight is an amazing source of energy

4 SUNLIGHT Plants use the sun on a daily basis to synthesize sugars and so light energy from the sun is transformed into chemical energy. When a person is sitting in the sun, your body warms up, and in this manner light energy is transformed into heat energy. Similar to this, light energy from the sun is transformed into electrical energy to generate a current in solar panels or photo-voltaic cells.

5 USES OF SOLAR PANELS Calculators Lighting and heating of pools Charging of cellphones Solar-powered cars and airplanes

6 OPERATION OF A SOLAR PANEL Sunlight contains energy and when sunlight touches an object, it can be transformed into a different type of energy.

7 OPERATION OF A SOLAR PANEL Most Solar panels have a layer of silicon crystals that generates an electric current when sunlight shines on it

8 OPERATION OF A SOLAR PANEL An electric current is generated when an electron inside an element moves and heat is generated when electrons remain on one place and vibrates.

9 OPERATION OF A SOLAR PANEL When sunlight shines on the layer of silicon on the solar panel, electrons inside the silicon crystals start to move and an electric current is generated

10 COLOUR AND LIGHT White light is a mixture of different colours: Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Violet When white light, like sunlight, shines through a prism, a rainbow of colours is generated on the other side.

11 COLOUR AND LIGHT Different colours of light have different wavelengths and light that we can see is called the visible spectrum.

12 COLOUR AND LIGHT The longer the wavelength of a wave, the less energy the wave will have or a lower frequency.

13 COLOUR AND LIGHT The colour of any object is determined by the type of light that is sent to our eyes.

14 COLOUR AND LIGHT Many photographers use different coloured lenses to reflect light of certain colours and absorb light of another colour, creating a different type of colour photo.

15 EXPERIMENT

16 MATERIALS 7 x Consol Solar Jar Glasbottle, Solar panel, LED Light one bottle is used as control

17 MATERIALS Coloured cellophane acts as light filters Purple, Blue, Red, Green and Yellow

18 METHOD Different coloured cellophane is attached to the different bottles

19 METHOD The lights are charged for two hours in the sun.

20 METHOD The burning time of the lights were measured (in hours)

21 RESULTS Wavelength of Light Colour of Filter Burning Time (Hours) 400nm Violet/Purple Purple 4 hours 12 min 475 nm Blue Blue 4 hours 30 min 550 nm Green Green 5 hours 34 min 600 nm Yellow Yellow 5 hours 45 min 650 nm Red Red 1 hour 13 min

22 RESULTS White light Normal light without filter served as control and burns for six hours.

23 DISCUSSION From our experiment, we can have the following derivations: Different wavelengths of light made different amounts of energy available; The colour filters only allowed light of the same colour to pass through the filter; Longer wavelengths of light passed more energy to the atoms and caused the light to burn for a longer time.

24 DISCUSSION The red filter let the least amount of light pass and the light burned for the shortest time. It is possible that the red light did not have enough energy to excite the electrons on the silicon atoms.

25 DISCUSSION The Burning Time of Solar Lights with Different Coloured Filters 06:00 04:48 03:36 02:24 01:12 00:00 Violet Blue Green Yellow Red

26 CONCLUSION Results support the hypothesis Different coloured filters has a different effect on the burning time of a solar light. Therefore it is better not to use coloured solar lights.

27 THANK YOU THE END