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Facts About Solar Energy
Definition: energy in the form of light and heat. Solar energy allows life, and creates the weather/climate conditions we have on our earth.
Interesting Facts
- Power Used: if we used 0.001744% of the available solar energy on earth it would meet current global consumption.
- Greenhouses: romans were the first to build a green house. These allowed Roman’s to grow cucumbers all year round.
- Disinfection: exposing bottles of water to between 6 hours and two days (depends upon weather) can disinfect water. The world health organization recommends this method.
- Energy Weapon: Archimedes used polished shields to focus sunlight and force a Roman fleet away. Its still under debate, see this wikipedia page for details.
- Da Vinci: foretold the coming of the solar energy industry; he had an idea that we ought to use solar power (via concave mirrors) for water heating.
- Oil companies: some oil companies predict a huge increase in the use of solar energy. Shell oil expects we will rely on it for around 50% of our energy needs by the mid 21st century.
- Solar Powered Airplane: a solar powered plane traversed the USA in 1990 using no fuel.
Math Facts
- Energy needs: about 15% of the world is without electricity
- America’s consumption: the USA uses around 25% of the world’s energy.
- Solar energy received: The earth receives 174 PW at a constant rate.
- Amount reduced: the atmosphere reflects 6% of the solar energy & absorbs 16%. Clouds & dust reflect 20%, diffuse 20% and absorb 3% of the energy.
- Total energy absorbed by earth per year: 3850 zettajoules per year.
- Energy consumption per year: 0.0567 zettajoules
- Solar panels generally convert: About 15% of the incoming solar energy into electricity.
General Facts
- The word: solar power is quite similar to solar energy however it refers more to conversion of energy into electricity.
comments
8 Responses to “Facts About Solar Energy”
The article isn’t really that accurate, for instance “Energy Weapon: Archimedes used polished shields to focus sunlight and force a Roman fleet away.” isn’t a fact. I think the numbers are wrong on the first ‘fact’ as well.
Good point Tom. Too many of these ‘informative’ blogs, or whatever they are called these days fail to reference, or quote sources.
Sorry about that guys. I’ve added in a bit about the debate on the Archimedes bit. I’ll go ahead and quote sources on upcoming articles as well.
Thanks for taking the time to contribute, this is a new blog and I’d like it to grow out naturally in a way that the readers will enjoy.
Normally I am not all that picky, but “water-filled bottles of water?”
Fixed, my grammar has taken a hit after living in China for 4 years. Stangely enough I taught English for 2 years of that! Thanks for pointing out my error Abe I appreciate it.
Living with foreigners really kills your native language skills, doesn’t it? I spent two years with a group of Koreans - I started dropping articles, forgot proper conjugations, developed strange grammar patterns. An den der’s deez intert00bz dat pwn wuts left, just for lulz.
If I might point out - it’s “concave” - not “conclave”. One refers to the inside of a bowl-shaped object, the other is a fancy way of referring to a group of old white guys.
A plane Traversed the U.S. not Transversed
@ Dave
Yep, thats more or less what killed it. I think my grammar might actually be a bit better than it was 2 years ago when I was teaching! Now-a-days I work with expats (people from the states, UK, New Zealand, Australia) and my English is improving (yeah to the level of this article). Luckily this blog just hired a university student who is a math whiz, an engineer and inventor (no joke) to write mind numbing articles on solar energy. Oh and fixed that problem. Cheers Dave.
@ Ed
Fixed it, thanks Ed.