The day has arrived when you have to think about how to build solar panels in your own home to save energy bills and therefore precious money and do your little bit for saving the environment.
The advantage of this experiment is to learn about something first-hand what one has only read about. This way you will know what it is for yourself. And your entire family can participate too! To begin, head out to the hardware department.
Once there, buy half a square foot of a sheet of copper flashing, an electric stove, a large mouth bottle, glass or plastic (5 litre mineral jar), a sensitive micro-ammeter, few table spoons of table salt, tap water, sand paper or wire brush on an electric drill, metal shears and three alligator clip leads.
First thing, wash hands to keep clean and dry. Cut a piece of the copper sheeting to the size of the diameter of the electric stove. Now, wash copper sheet with soap to rid it of any oil. With sand paper, clean the sheet really well.
Once this is complete, let the sheet cool off without inducing the cooling process. It will be seen that the sheet is getting smaller. Flaking of the chemical deposits will be seen at this point.
When 30 minutes are up, switch off electric stove and allow sheet to cool at its own pace. The sheet will shrink. You will see flaking happening now and once completely cooled, hold it under running water and flake off very gently. DO NOT brush hard or it might damage the SOLAR PANEL.
Run water over it from a running tap after it cools down. This will wash off the flakes but ensure you do this really gently and do not erode this SOLAR PANEL created by you.
Now, attach your clip leads, one to the new copper plate, and one to the COOKED one. The clean sheet should be attached to the positive side of the meter and the cooked one to the negative.
Mix hot tap water with a few table spoons of salt until completely dissolved. Pour the saltwater into the bottle taking care not to wet the clip leads. Pour rill about an inch of the copper sheets are above water. Your solar cell is ready!
The cell produces 50 micro amps at 0.25 volts. Do not expect to light bulbs to light or charge batteries with this device. It can be used as a light detector or light meter and it would take acres of them to power your house which would be very expensive.
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