7th-Grader Designs Three Dimensional Solar Cell

“12-year-old William Yuan’s invention of a highly-efficient, three-dimensional nanotube solar cell for visible and ultraviolet light has won him an award and a $25,000 scholarship from the Davidson Institute for Talent Development. ‘Current solar cells are flat and can only absorb visible light'” Yuan said. ‘I came up with an innovative solar cell that absorbs both visible and UV light. My project focused on finding the optimum solar cell to further increase the light absorption and efficiency and design a nanotube for light-electricity conversion efficiency.’ Solar panels with his 3D cells would provide 500 times more light absorption than commercially-available solar cells and nine times more than cutting-edge 3D solar cells. ‘My next step is to talk to manufacturers to see if they will build a working prototype,’ Yuan said. “If the design works in a real test stage, I want to find a company to manufacture and market it.”” – Slashdot

The comments are hilarious:

How? (Score:3, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward
How do people that young get access to tools to build these things?

Re:How? (Score:5, Funny)
by Mordok-DestroyerOfWo (1000167)
Is anybody else feeling really inadequate right now?

Re:How? (Score:2, Insightful)
by Spazztastic (814296)
Mod parent up.

Makes me feel stupid for spending my childhood throwing rocks at cats.

Re:How? (Score:5, Funny)
by idontgno (624372)
Don’t feel bad; you make me feel stupid for spending my childhood throwing cats at rocks. Your way works a lot better.

~ by Skennedy on September 18, 2008.

Posted in Uncategorized

11 Responses to “7th-Grader Designs Three Dimensional Solar Cell”

  1. That’s cool.

    However, looking at the awards from Davidson, my admiration goes most to Christine Shrock. She won $50,000 and I’m so glad for her):

    Christine Shrock
    Age: 17
    Setauket, New York
    Category: Science

    In her project, “Investigating an Allosteric Binding Site for a New Class of HIV-1 Protease Inhibitors,” Christine developed an approach to finding a more effective HIV treatment. She studied a region of the HIV protease, a protein crucial in the replication of HIV, and found that this region is a promising target for drugs to bind to change the shape of the protease, preventing it from performing its function. Christine’s research is an important contribution to the development of a new class of drugs to reduce the number of infections and deaths caused by HIV.

    bardicwench said this on September 18, 2008 at 7:30 pm

  2. Technology journalism has a reputation for running stories about technology designs which– for all we know– will not work, and glossing it over as if they were real. This is just such a story.

    matt_arnold said this on September 18, 2008 at 9:24 pm

    • So? This happens all the time, and plenty of corporations advertise goals they just can’t meet. I fail to see how that makes this any less exciting.

      atdt1991 said this on September 18, 2008 at 9:31 pm

      • For the same reason a crayon drawing of a faster-than-light spaceship is not exciting. It’s not real.

        Well, it might be an exciting fictional story of two-fisted space adventure, but that’s a different excitement context.

        matt_arnold said this on September 18, 2008 at 9:36 pm

        • I think there is a large difference between “I have dreamed up this thing that I think one day will happen” and “I have won a $25,000 scholarship for creating an innovative new design that has not been done before, and theoretically works.”

          Yes, the fact that testing may prove it to flawed in some way is important, but that does not mean that it is meaningless or useless or even not a huge step forward. For all we know, it could work and change life as we know it forever, but you don’t see me howling from the rooftops, mad with the idea of “free” electric power, right?

          I can accept the reality of the situation and still be excited at the valid possibilities – stop trying to curmudgeon the enjoyment of science out of me.

          atdt1991 said this on September 18, 2008 at 9:48 pm

          • Yeah, I’m being too much of a wet blanket about it. Chalk it up to me howling “free power” from the rooftops one too many times after reading articles like these.

            matt_arnold said this on September 18, 2008 at 9:53 pm

        • I’m not mad. :) I’m just sayin’… aren’t you, like, the con chair of a science-fiction convention or something? I would think you would be more encouraging regarding this kind of thing. No one, least of all the 12 year old boy, thinks he’s sitting around with the flux capacitor in his hands.

          atdt1991 said this on September 18, 2008 at 9:53 pm

  3. lolsnarkz

    If he were really so smart he’d know that if it really turns out to be a viable product he should start his own company and market it himself.

    Slacker.

    myopicgreen said this on September 18, 2008 at 9:35 pm

  4. awesome. also those comments are great.

    t0astbandit said this on September 19, 2008 at 12:56 pm

Comments are closed.