Do It Yourself: How To Build Solar Panels In Your Own Home
The advantage of this experiment is to learn about something first-hand what one has only read about. This way you will know what it is for yourself. And your entire family can participate too! To begin, head out to the hardware department.
To begin with, clean your hands and wipe dry. Cut the copper sheeting to the diameter of the stove. Then, clean the copper sheet using soap to take away oil that might have accumulated on it. Wipe the sheet well with the sand paper.
First thing, wash hands to keep clean and dry. Cut a piece of the copper sheeting to the size of the diameter of the electric stove. Now, wash copper sheet with soap to rid it of any oil. With sand paper, clean the sheet really well.
Meanwhile, get the stove started and raise temperature to high. Place the copper sheet on top of it. You will see the sheet changing colors from orange to purple to red and then pink; once it heats further, the colors will go and now the sheet will go dark. Roast the sheet for about half hour.
Upon completion of this process, the sheet has to be cooled off at room temperature. You will notice that it is reducing in size as it gets to a normal temperature. It is during this process one see the accumulation of the dry bits of chemicals on the sheet.
Run water over it from a running tap after it cools down. This will wash off the flakes but ensure you do this really gently and do not erode this SOLAR PANEL created by you.
Now, attach your clip leads, one to the new copper plate, and one to the COOKED one. The clean sheet should be attached to the positive side of the meter and the cooked one to the negative.
Now, attach the leads. The second sheet should be wired to the positive area of the meter and the first one must be clipped to the negative one. In hot water, put in a good number of tablespoons of salt and mix thoroughly. This concoction has to be poured into the bottle ensuring that the sheets are not submerged up to an inch from top. This is your home manufactured solar panel!
The cell produces 50 micro amps at 0.25 volts. Do not expect to light bulbs to light or charge batteries with this device. It can be used as a light detector or light meter and it would take acres of them to power your house which would be very expensive.