Hair-Brained Teen May Revolutionize Solar Panel Industry

by Warren Riddle on September 9, 2009 at 06:10 PM

Milan Karki, an 18-year-old Nepalese student who idolizes inventor Thomas Edison, has been experimenting with electricity since he was a child. His goal is to create low-cost, low-maintenance providers of energy in order to cheaply and efficiently bring power to remote, impoverished villages.

Karki and four of his classmates now believe they have successfully accomplished that task and are publicizing the details of their attempts to revolutionize solar electricity. Instead of the expensive silicon components typically used to conduct energy in solar panels, the Karki team used human hair in their working panel.

The hair-powered panel works because melanin (the pigment that gives hair color) is light-sensitive and can act as a conductor. According to the Daily Mail, one of these nine-volt Sol-Hair panels would be available for a fraction of the price of old silicon panels, and is capable of charging enough batteries to power a light source for an entire evening.

Karki told the Daily Mail, "This is an easy solution for the crisis we are having today. We have begun the long walk to save the planet." With kids like Karki, and the Singapore students who devised a method of harvesting energy from roads, that walk may not be as long as he thinks. [From: The Daily Mail]

Tags: green, science, solar panels, solar power, SolarPanels, SolarPower, teens, top

Comments

blightvoetSep 9th 2009 7:15PM

Neutral

Ahhh...

I see what you did there.

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ThomasESep 12th 2009 3:36AM

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Nepal, Singapore, Japan -- did you ever wonder why these students come up with reallly great inventions (and not our own young people)? You can probably bet your bippie that the schools in other countries are not teaching their students about non-traditional families, transgender surgeries, and how to put on a condom, as well as all kinds of political nonsense and other ridiculous non-school-related stuff. We're allowing our students to be corrupted by this garbage that does nothing to further their futures -- or ours. What passes for news now is an interviewer asking, "How do you feel about...?" Whatever happened to real journalism -- asking people who know, "Tell us what happened," "What did you do?" "What did you observe?" "What did your research turn up?" "What would you recommend?" Their feelings are not relevant, their thoughts are. Just think, if we stopped letting the history revisionists change this country's and the world's history in our textbooks and other books, our children could be saved having to repeat past mistakes. I don't remember who said, "Those who are not familiar with history are destined to repeat it." If we still insisted on giving our children a real education in reading and writing, math and science instead of all the feel-good talk about their feelings c--p, we could have another "Thomas Edison" from our own country. New inventions are very exciting!

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gr8gabboSep 10th 2009 5:22AM

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BEWARE...the energy companies will stomp this kid into the dust. He is messing with their monry tree....

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SanskritSep 10th 2009 9:12AM

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No, because it's a kid, they're more likely to pat him on the back, maybe give him a scholarship and an honorarium, buy the rights from him and then bury it as deep as they can.

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cqdeedSep 10th 2009 6:55AM

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I think something outside the box will begat advances in the field but this one will have to be able to be duplicated and tested many times before it becomes accepted. Many energy companies and professional energy researchers will look at this and say "BS" and never consider trying it out until they are hit over the head with success.

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gr8gabboSep 10th 2009 10:05AM

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lol....watered down...politically correct. but same story.

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manjuDec 1st 2012 9:36AM

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Innovations on developing a low cost sustainable solar panel is happening around the world, The one found in your article is totally an out of box solution. We, at http://www.thesolarindia.com are waiting for commercial roll off of Sol hair panels.

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