Related Sections: Green Tech
Nepalese teen's science project: a solar panel made from human hair
A schoolboy from Nepal has come up with a recession-busting new solar panel which replaces the silicon component with human hair. Milan Karki, an 18-year-old student from the region of Khotang, devised the idea after discovering that hair pigment Melanin acts as an energy converter.
Each panel, which is around 15 inches square, produces 9 Volts (18 Watts) of energy, and costs $38 to make. This, it has to be said, is mainly due to the price of the raw materials: half a kilo of human hair costs around 25ยข in Nepal. Karki is hoping to commercialize his invention, which can charge a cellphone or power batteries to provide an evening's worth of light, and eventually mass produce it.
"First I wanted to provide electricity for my home, then my village," says Karki, who was inspired by British physicist Stephen Hawking. "Now I am thinking for the whole world. We have begun the long walk to save the planet." Catch a shot of the teenager's invention below.
By dennis at 8:05 AM ON 09/09/09
regular panels cost around $2 per watt and last ~20+ years. i wonder how long this would last. if this is massed produce it might cost less.
By Craigit at 8:22 AM ON 09/09/09
Great! Now scalping may come back. jk, love the idea
By Anonymous at 9:50 AM ON 09/09/09
$38 for 18 watts is $2.1 per watt, isn't it?
Cost will definitely go down at industrial scale, from bulk discount if nothing else.
Durability is an issue, but hair is a renewable resource. Besides, I am pretty sure modern panels will be replaced sooner than in 20 years due to some new innovation.
By Hank Jekyll at 11:10 AM ON 09/09/09
Two words; homeless hair.
By Bdawgfl at 12:04 PM ON 09/09/09
Eventually the world goes this way and people who wax will be wasting electricity and be prosecuted for not being green. But as a bonus all the non armpit shavers in the world will have a good reason to clean em up.
By Mr. Gumsandals at 1:12 PM ON 09/09/09
Clever as hell. I hope the kid can make money off it.
By Realist at 1:59 PM ON 09/09/09
Shame that an actual innovation gets such a tiny footprint on the main page, while stupid cell phone of the week get space for huge marketing pics. Shameless pandering Dvice, shameless!
By madscience at 2:39 PM ON 09/09/09
congrats kid...
By Steel Fox at 3:34 PM ON 09/09/09
If melanin is the magic ingredient, then my guess is you can skip the human hair bit and just use the melanin. I immagine you can synthetically produce melanin for much cheaper than hair.
By craighyatt at 4:35 PM ON 09/09/09
Aw c'mon you guys! This is clearly a hoax. Human hair is non-conductive. To take advantage of melanin's properties as a semiconductor you'd have to isolate it chemically from the hair. Since hair isn't a conductor, clearly you can't just string a bunch of it in a loop. And just to check, I measured a lock of my wife's jet black hair. Non-conductive. No energy produced under UV illumination. Here is a photo: http://sites.google.com/site/edwardcraighyatt/CraigsProjects/gizhair.jpg?attredirects=0 At best, this boy is fooling himself. At worst, he's a liar. Shame for publishing this without any fact checking.
By craighyatt at 5:38 PM ON 09/09/09
By plyrh8rkor at 6:48 AM ON 09/10/09
some one sounds nervous
By craighyatt at 5:34 PM ON 09/10/09
Sounds nervous? He should be. He's gonna wind up in jail for fraud if he's not careful.
By meh at 6:09 AM ON 09/12/09
sounds like kaka to me but then when you get zapped by static electricity your hair stands on end so what is that all about
By meh at 6:13 AM ON 09/12/09
oh yeah that dudes debunking site looks like the webpage of your typical internet paranoid schizophrenic kook conspiracy theorist by the way good job if the dude is such a genius maybe he should learn how to make a decent web page before trying to debunk this
By craighyatt at 3:15 PM ON 09/12/09
@meh By " typical internet paranoid schizophrenic kook conspiracy theorist" by this you mean an experienced engineer with an MS in Computer Engineering who has a number of patents and scientific publications to his credit. What have you accomplished lately?
By anon at 3:24 PM ON 09/12/09
on your cellphone!
Text DVICE to 72434
editor@dvice.com
anon:
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