Teenager invents £23 solar panel that could be solution to developing world's energy needs

UK Daily Mail ^

[mnehring]

A new type of solar panel using human hair could provide the world with cheap, green electricity, believes its teenage inventor.

Milan Karki, 18, who comes from a  village in rural Nepal, believes he has found the solution to the developing world's energy needs.

The young inventor says hair is easy to use as a conductor in solar panels and could revolutionise renewable energy.

[Yo-Yo]

Even the “bright idea” bulb has gone CFL?

[mnehring]

LOL, I didn’t even notice that..

[a fool in paradise]

Alternate technologies use static electricity obtained by stroking a housecat.

[HuntsvilleTxVeteran]

Total BS!

[Callahan]

Does this mean Al Gore can shave Rosie O’Donnell’s back and turn a profit?

[Tarpon]

Well yes it might, but a coal power plant is a sure thing. I have serious doubts about this ruse. And why exactly do we prohibit these poor countries from doing anything to improve their standard of living — Ask a liberal.

DDT would also help, cheap, easy to produce, easy to deploy, hurts nothing, except pests and oh yeah, kills malaria and west Nile virus carrying mosquitoes.

[Constitution Day]

I bet he’s got a perpetual motion machine up his sleeve, too.

[FMBass]

What a hair brained idea!

[exist]

Let T Boone Pickens run his whole business on it first. Then I’ll try it.

[MHGinTN]

Aw come on, it makes good barbershop conversation!

[driftdiver]

“The young inventor says hair is easy to use as a conductor in solar panels and could revolutionise renewable energy.”

Well that could grow on you.

[crusty old prospector]

Maybe he should try spider webs?

[mnehring]

Technically, melanin is considered a conductive polymer, so he may have stumbled on something.

http://plastics.inwiki.org/Conductive_polymers

[djf]

Ummm... I’ll eat my words and kiss my own rear end if this is anything but a snow job.

Never in my 40+ years of chemistry sets, telescopes, microscopes, digital voltmeters, etc have I ever heard that human hair exposed to sunlight suddenly develops this magical electric potential!

Now I did know a couple gals during and since college that had long hair and were pretty electric, but that’s not what this is about!

;-)

[ansel12]

Doesn’t the solar panel problem get “solved” about every six months or so for the last 30 years?

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

Mullet power!!

[mnehring]

Physical properties and technological applicationsAbsorption spectrum of melanin

Melanin is a biopolymer and a neuropeptide. In the early 1970s, researchers found melanin to be an organic semiconductor (Science, vol 183, 853-855 (1974)). Studies revealed that melanin acted as an electrical threshold switch, emitting a flash of light— electroluminescence— when it switched. Though the findings were published, these findings largely were ignored. Melanin also shows negative differential resistance, a classic property of electronically active, conductive, organic polymers. In 2000, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to three scientists for their later 1977 work in the discovery and development of conductive polymers. The polymers utilized in this research were "polyacetylene black" melanins.

The original discoverers of switching and high electrical conductivity in melanin and related organic semiconductors were not honored in 2000. However, their melanin organic electronic device is now in the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History's "Smithsonian Chips" collection of historic solid-state electronic devices.
Melanin influences neural activity and mediates the conduction of radiation, light, heat and kinetic energy. As such, it is the subject of intense interest in biotech research and development, most notably in organic electronics (sometimes called "plastic electronics") and nanotechnology, where dopants are used to dramatically boost melanin conductivity. Pyrrole black and acetylene black are the most commonly studied organic semiconductors.

From: http://en.allexperts.com/e/m/me/melanin.htm

[mnehring]

See post #18..

Work on those yoga poses.

[EyeGuy]

Yet another hare-brained solar scheme?

I’d much rather mine for King Coal, or drill for black gold....Texas Tea......