Science Memes

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[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 14 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Actually there's also the mirror based solar which boils water in a central column.

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[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 13 points 3 months ago (2 children)

It's cooler than that; they use the heat to make molten salt, then use a heat exchanger to boil water with that, the salt gets stupid hot and holds energy into the night.

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[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 3 points 3 months ago (1 child)

Sounds like it's hotter than that not cooler

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/l3CFqCgmumw

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[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 3 points 3 months ago

coincidentally, just saw a youtube short with more crazy shit

they mix three salts together to control the melting temperature so it's still hot but not as hard on the equipment.

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[–] Smaile@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

its basically a bowl of water made of solar panels, i mean its not a bad idea at all but its nothing crazy either, probably a bitch to maintain tho.

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[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 months ago (3 children)

Photovoltaic panels don't turn heat into electricity. It turns light into electricity.

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[–] dsilverz@catodon.rocks 1 point 3 months ago (2 children)

Not meaning to be the achkshually guy, but, heat is a kind of "light" (EM radiation) within the Infrared range of the spectrum. We can't see it, but snakes can.!science_memes@mander.xyz

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[–] Zink@programming.dev 4 points 3 months ago

If I may achkshually your achkshually, I believe that heat is the energy in the collective motion of particles of matter, and infrared photons are one way that energy can be radiated away from one body and absorbed by another.

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[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 months ago

I will uno reverse umm achkshually you. Heat is not synonymous with infrared light. Objects with heat will emit energy into their environment as EM radiation. That heat can also be conducted away through contact with another object.

All objects with heat do give off a wide spectrum of EM radiation, with the uppermost frequency being proportional to the object's temperature. A very cold object might only give off radio waves. Room temperature objects, like you, glow in the infrared. Above 500C or so, objects start glowing visibly red, then orange and yellow. A phenomenon we call incandescence.

Objects that absorb light can and often do increase in heat, PV panels turn some of the energy that strikes them as light into electrical energy rather than thermal energy.