Now that summer has arrived, your
kids are most likely home a lot, and could get bored fast. While summer breaks
are often filled with playing with friends and sleeping in, sneak in a project
every couple of weeks. It’ll keep their minds stimulated and fill their lazy
days right up.
But what to do…
We’ve got an idea! Help you children
build their very own solar panels.
We’re constantly telling you to get
your kids involved in learning about solar energy. Seeing as how kids are our future
and so is solar energy, it seems fitting that they know about the renewable
sources they will hopefully one day depend on. These items can all be found at
a hardware store, so gather the materials and start saving energy today!
Start by heating a copper sheet over
an electric stove stop for about 30 minutes on high. This process creates a
copper oxide layer on the sheet, imperative for your solar panel. The copper
sheet will slowly begin to turn black, but don’t remove it from the heat.
After a half hour, remove the copper
sheet carefully from the stove and let it cool for about 20 minutes. Most of
the black will go away and the sheet will return to its copper color. However,
if any black spots remain on the copper sheet after it has cooled, very
delicately removed them with tweezers. Be careful not to scrape anything off
the sheet itself, as you could damage the heat-created oxide layer.
Place the heated copper sheet and
another non-heated copper sheet into a plastic cup, facing each other. Pour two
tablespoons of hot water and two tablespoons of salt into the plastic cup. Mix
the salt/water solution together gently until just combined.
Take a spring-loaded clip and attach
it to each of the copper sheets. Then attach a microampere meter to both of the
clips. These last two steps are essential in collecting heat and generating it
into solar energy.
Set the plastic cup in the sun for
about another 30 minutes. When you check the microampere meter, there should be
a good amount of solar electricity gathered from the cup!
This is a great project to do with
your kids, as it doesn’t take much time and you can show them results in less
than an hour. While you’re working, take the time to explain to your children
what solar energy is and why we will need it to essentially keep our planet
alive one day. Have fun!!