13-Year-Old Uses Fibonacci Sequence For Solar Power Breakthrough 410
An anonymous reader tips news of 7th grader Aidan Dwyer, who used phyllotaxis — the way leaves are arranged on plant stems in nature — as inspiration to arrange an array of solar panels in a way that generates 20-50% more energy than a uniform, flat panel array. Aidan wrote,
"I designed and built my own test model, copying the Fibonacci pattern of an oak tree. I studied my results with the compass tool and figured out the branch angles. The pattern was about 137 degrees and the Fibonacci sequence was 2/5. Then I built a model using this pattern from PVC tubing. In place of leaves, I used PV solar panels hooked up in series that produced up to 1/2 volt, so the peak output of the model was 5 volts. The entire design copied the pattern of an oak tree as closely as possible. ... The Fibonacci tree design performed better than the flat-panel model. The tree design made 20% more electricity and collected 2 1/2 more hours of sunlight during the day. But the most interesting results were in December, when the Sun was at its lowest point in the sky. The tree design made 50% more electricity, and the collection time of sunlight was up to 50% longer!"His work earned him a Young Naturalist Award from the American Museum of Natural History and a provisional patent on the design.
Makes sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Makes sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFS
His work earned him a Young Naturalist Award from the American Museum of Natural History and a provisional patent on the design.
Patenting natures design, anyone else thinks that something is wrong here?
Re:Makes sense... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Makes sense... (Score:5, Informative)
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That does look like prior _art_, but not like prior _science_. The Fibonacci-tree is not about some random and good-looking arrangement of the solar panels to make a cool gadget to charge your iphone. It is about the exact, calculated arrangement of those panels to increase the efficiency.
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We had a course in 2003, where we had to use a few panels to provide electricity for a specific device we where to built. We were made well aware that a static orientation toward the mean would be the easiest to built, but the less performing one, that a tracking device power would eat quite a chunk of the extra electricity we would be generating, and that we could explore tons of other orientations, even to get our inspiration from the trees.
Anyway, as the illumination was controlled it was possible to sol
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This Slashdottian would rather kudos the kid for his ingenuity than wonder why we havent come up with it before.
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Re:Makes sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, that's a nice picture but there's a lot more to what the kid did than make a diorama of a tree and glue solar panels to it instead of leaves. What you posted is a nice looking pic but there is no additional info. As far as I can tell, it's just an ipod/iphone solar charger with an aesthetically pleasing design. Is there anything to suggest that the designers of the charger in the pic thought to reproduce the phyllotaxis as a way of increasing efficiency? That's the, potentially, patentable part about the kid's work, not the fact that he made it "look like a tree".
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IANAPL, but I think he had one year from the public release to file for a patent.
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The reason nobody patented it before is that it is NOT actually more efficient and the production setup is overly complex for the job. Read my analysis above.
His "power gain" is due to using crappy PV cells that maxed out overly fast in direct sun. Rerun the experiment with PV cells that didn't max out ("clipping") and abandon potential power and you'd have a different result.
Now, the fact that he had a longer power arrangement isn't that hard to do either. Want to make something to function in a similar wa
Re:Makes sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
You did notice the fact that he is in the seventh grade right?
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From TFS
His work earned him a Young Naturalist Award from the American Museum of Natural History and a provisional patent on the design.
Patenting natures design, anyone else thinks that something is wrong here?
He observed the design and tested it so why not patent it. You can't expect everything to be free.
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Nature was first, but he is not patenting it as nature provides (something that can't be said for bug Pharma and DNA). While he is using the same general concept as provided by nature he adapted it to use solar panels and other materials not in nature. There are plenty of things that should be obvious, but for various reasons are overlooked or discounted before they are even shared.
Again, at least he wasn't patenting nature.
Re:Makes sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, why not - never stopped Monsanto....
survival of the least unfit (Score:3)
After all, it stands to reason that nature would have already worked out the most efficient way to collect solar energy eons ago.
see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unintelligent_design [wikipedia.org] .
Re:Makes sense... (Score:5, Interesting)
Small nitpick - nature will optimize to a local minimum but not necessarily the global minimum. i.e. the plants might be stuck with the 'good enough' design instead of the fully optimized version. In this case, it appears that the 'natural' solution is pretty good and well optimized, especially with the low fluence case (i.e. the winter).
It's a minor but important nitpick because not all plants use the same spread and angles - I haven't read up on this, but it implies to me that there area niches in an ecosystem to have other solutions (kind of like the scavengers around the top predator - the predator might be really successful at getting it's food, but there might still be meat on the bone for the scavenger birds.) To bring the analogy back to topic, there might be other spacing/angle solutions that, alone, are worse, but with a secondary system placed interstitially, result in an overall more efficient solution. (Barely-thought about examples: placing a reflective base below, and having two-sided panels to catch other angles - or, perhaps studying the placement and angles of vine leaves can give an interstitial solution.)
So, locally minimized solutions can still be great, especially if a second-order approach cleans it up even further (as in the natural example.)
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It could be just a heat collection pattern, letting the most light hit all the branches in order that the truck has enough warmth or to prevent complete branch die off.
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I believe trees for the most part lose their leaves because water freezes in winter and this would make it difficult to keep nutrients flowing to the leaves. Nature has established a balancing act based on the needs of a particular species in a given geographical context. What is being balanced will vary. It is not all about solar input in plants.
For the solar panels it could be a heat issue. I remember reading a few months back that solar panel efficiencies drop when it gets too hot. Here is one article ma
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I don't think you realize exactly what you're saying here. You might not be from America, where the school system is a bit different from elsewhere. Here, children start 1st grade at age 6 to 7, and continue through elementary school (grades 1 through 6), junior high or middle school (grades 7 and 8), and high school (grades 9 through 12).
That's the same as where I grew up, except for junior high lasting until 9th grade, and high school being three years.
So, this 7th grader is, in fact, aged at 13 or 14 years old, and so I would like to politely challenge you to point out a recent period at which he would have been considered an adult.
My paternal grandfather started working as a carpenter apprentice when he finished obligatory school (7th grade), and got married a couple of years later. I've never known a man who knew more maths and geometry than him - that was back when they taught these things to children, not to young adults.
My maternal grandfather became a fisherman at age 13, a sailor at age 15, and was a pilot by t
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Evolution make no claims of producing optimal setups - for a single component or for the whole.
There are also likely plenty of other selection pressures on plants that have to be traded off against solar energy collection.
But yes it does seem like something someone would have tried before - then again putting your solar panels where there they aren't in shade at any point and pointing them at the same should still be better. Of course for solar panels not in the middle of the desert that can be problematic.
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Haven't we already changed from first to invent to first to file?
Now he needs a retail agreement (Score:5, Funny)
so it's available in branches everywhere.
Re:Now he needs a retail agreement (Score:4, Funny)
Agreed, but really the first step of a successful business is to poplar your cherry in the patent area. So I wood say hes ahead of the grain already.
He just used more solar cells (Score:2, Interesting)
He's used 18 cells on the tree, but 10 in the flat array. So an increase of 80% in cell numbers results in an increase of 20-50% in yield. I don't see a massive future for this.
Re:He just used more solar cells (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:He just used more solar cells (Score:4, Informative)
What seems to count for this award is a scientific investigation driven by a well-posed question. He did just that -- he tested a hypothesis by making a setup, doing repeated measurements, and drawing conclusions. Awards such as these want to encourage exactly what this boy has done. That he made a basic mistake in his setup is probably simply not all that relevant.
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The article is just his personal explanation of his experiment. Not why they rewarded him or whether the results are actually useful in practice. The 'about the award' page gives the impression that it's about the scientific process and encouraging inquiring minds. Neither could I find anything about cell count in the tree versus the array in the text, or about the average elevation of both models.
So what am I missing here?
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That he could easily divide the output of the two arrays by the number of elements in the array to get a comparable answer. There is nothing wrong with the setup.
Re:He just used more solar cells (Score:5, Insightful)
You can't see the back side of the flat array. I bet there's another ten on the other side. I also think there are probably 20 on the tree, not 18. I can't see the whole tree clearly enough to get an accurate count. It seems to me that a young man smart enough to work out a design like this would not overlook something so simple as the number of cells in use during his experiment and I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when the only proof against him is a single incomplete photo.
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You can't see the back side of the flat array. I bet there's another ten on the other side
OK, that may be true. But then those 10 'north facing' cells are pretty useless and could probably be removed without actually affecting energy production. How many people install (in the northern hemisphere) panels that are north-facing?
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How many people install (in the northern hemisphere) panels that are north-facing?
I hear it's a popular practice in the southern hemisphere :)
But I agree - the total area of the solar panels on the tree is greater than the static array. Normally that would be okay if it was accounted for (calculating everything per unit area) but the article does not seem to be the actual report he made. Shame, that...
The tree design also uses MUCH more area, even though he says it takes less - the tree might have a smaller base, but it casts a much larger shadow which limits your ability to build multip
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It looks like the tree has 4 braches, each with 5 cells.
The flat array has 20 as well.
What strikes me is the surface area taken by the tree versus flat. If I can get 2x as many cells per unit of area in a flat design, would it actually be better?
Follow up experiments would be good. What kind of branch density can you get? How does height affect possible density? As someone pointed out, what if you have all 20 flat cells rotation to point at the sun 24/7.
Good start though!
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As someone pointed out, what if you have all 20 flat cells rotation to point at the sun 24/7.
Then it would be a pretty damned good trick (without constantly changing its geographical location).
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It costs energy to change the direction of array is pointing. This also increases maintence and construction costs.
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Pointing it at the sun 24/7 is the easy part, moving the Earth out of the way is what's difficult.
Here you go (Score:2)
Plenty of web pages address this. Here's an example:
http://www.spacefuture.com/archive/conceptual_study_of_a_solar_power_satellite_sps_2000.shtml [spacefuture.com]
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If the "flat array" has a "back side", it's not flat. /nitpick
His testing was pretty bad (Score:4, Interesting)
You caught part of it , but even positioning of the flat array versus his "tree" skewed the results. There were times he shows where the tree was not in shade but the flat panel was fully in shade. The claims of increased efficiency ignore using panels that have mechanisms to allow them to track the sun. Plus he isn't measuring the right output of photo cells, he should have measured energy production.
As for his idea of trees, btdt http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3206/2807030740_25f3f2fa53.jpg [flickr.com]
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In this experiment he's comparing "unoptimized" flat panels versus tree-panels which, may I remind you, can be considered to be just as unoptimized as the flat panels. What I'm trying to say is that there are probably a handful of really simple small improvements one can make on the sun panel tree to make it output even more power.
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I don't think there is any doubt that a flat array, tracking perfectly with the sun, would outperform the tree design.
I do. Where does the energy for the motor come from? What about the energy to build the motor and repair it?
Re:He just used more solar cells (Score:5, Insightful)
If you check that image, his tree model was able to pack an increase of 80% cells in 50% of the surface area he placed in the normal flat panel model. The tree model has the advantage that it doesn't have to rotate in order to achieve direct sunlight during the day/year. So it's inventive in his being able to achieve cell density that other people haven't seemly taken advantage of as of yet.
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Certainly, but it goes to show a linear setup is not always ideal. I would be curious to compare his approach compare to other randomised tree layouts. In many ways what this does is offer tinkerers an other way of looking at things and the chance to validate what he did and maybe even take it in new directions.
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Now, if we can just keep it from falling over in a windstorm...
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If you check that image, his tree model was able to pack an increase of 80% cells in 50% of the surface area he placed in the normal flat panel model. The tree model has the advantage that it doesn't have to rotate in order to achieve direct sunlight during the day/year. So it's inventive in his being able to achieve cell density that other people haven't seemly taken advantage of as of yet.
Actually the idea of 3D solar arrays has been around for a while. The measure of their performance can be total conversion per flat area consumed or the uniformity of their output. The former statistic is only useful when you have a stand-alone case (e.g. one on top of a roof) because they end up shading each other. The other statistic is more useful. If you can use more solar cells but gain more constant energy without moving parts it may be a win because you are collecting more energy per area ov
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So presuming for a moment that most of his gains are in fact from the greater variety in orientation compared to the flat panel that only has the single (or two?) orientation(s), then how might this compare to...
A. PV cells with a fixed lens assembly on top
B. Flexible PV cells (they tend to flex in only 1 direction), curved so that the entire arc of the sun is perpendicular to the PV's surface
C. a large array of smaller PV cells on a 2-curve surface
Re:He just used more solar cells (Score:5, Informative)
Quote from the article: "The second model was a flat-panel array that was mounted at 45 degrees. It had the same type and number of PV solar panels as the tree design, and the same peak voltage."
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I understand what was quoted, but it doesn't match what I see. Also, 10 PV cells at 0.5V will have a max voltage of 5V. So how did the tree output 5.25 Volts? Certainly, he had to have more cells on the tree.
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Heck, TFA even states 13. That Hoegaarden stuff must have gone to his head.
No more posting drunk, umghhh.
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You're basing all of your criticism on one picture that may or may not show the actual configuration of his experiment. Knowing photographers, it was probably a posed photo that had nothing to do with the actual experiment.
Pretty sure you're failing worse than the 13 yr old kid is.
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No, he just compared it to an inefficient distribution (a roof with panels on the south and the north side).
As was pointed out in other comments there are 20 cells on the tree and, most probably, 10 cells on each side of the roof. Had he really compared to 20 cells in a flat panel array, he would have found that the tree distribution is less efficient than the flat panel.
By the way, there is an optimum inclination (vertical angle) of a photovoltaic module, which in Europe is between 30 and 50 (depending on
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Learning English.
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Cue the angry patent posts... (Score:2)
I can see them now..."Wtf? He patented how I arrange my fucking solar panels?"
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More like WTF he patented an oak tree?
So? Someone patented the cockleburr [hookandloop.com] (PDF).
Patents on an idea? Despicable! (Score:2)
This is exactly the type of thing the patent system was _not_ intended to protect.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_of_Columbus [wikipedia.org]
Slashdotted. Here is CORAL link (Score:5, Informative)
The site is already Slashdotted. Here is the CORAL link:
http://www.amnh.org.nyud.net/nationalcenter/youngnaturalistawards/2011/aidan.html [nyud.net]
His idea is based upon something that has existed since ... forever. It took a bright 13 year old to see it.
Are we missing the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
How many of you took time at the tender age of 13 to study leaf patterns on trees to figure out how best to capture sunlight and harness it for electricity? You can crap on his science all you want, but kids like this young man inspire me and give me hope that we aren't raising a bunch of video-game addicted sluggards who take everything for granted. Hooray for science and kids who want to pursue it! We want to encourage this behavior, not nit-pick him for possible flaws in research methodology.
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"Electricity hadn't even been invented when I was 13. Now get off my lawn!"
The universe hadn't been invented when I was 13. Now get off my void.
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It is NOT a power breakthrough - I wish it were. He used a measurement of the open circuit voltage. There is nothing about power in this discussion. A cell may generate very very near peak voltage when angled thirty degrees from the sun, but will produce less than 87% as much power as when faced directly at the sun. Maximizing the duration of the peak voltage is nice, but irrelevant. The integrated power generation is NOT increased with this arrangement.
It is not surprising that a thirteen year-old wo
Good documentation (Score:3)
I am more impressed by the documentation and accreditation on the website!
unaccounted-for variables (Score:3, Interesting)
- He set the flat array at an angle of 45 degrees. Is that the optimum angle for solar panels at his latitude?
- as mentioned elsewhere, more panels in the tree array.
- The photos show both arrays being partly shaded by trees in the yard. Since the arrays aren't at exactly the same position, the amount of shade can be different. The tree array is at an advantage: more distance between the panels means that it's less likely that more than one panel is shaded by a tree branch.
Still, it's an interesting result that raises a few questions:
- in current solar panels, the wafers are connected to their beighbors to minimise the amount of wiring. But this means that whole panel drops its output below the threshold if one row of wafers is shaded by a tree branch. Maybe we'd get more energy out of an array if we connected distant wafers in series instead, so a tree branch shadow is less likely to drop the output of a series of wafers below the threshold.
- is it possible to increase the output of an array by putting parts of it at different horizontal or vertical angles?
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In essence, as far as I can figure, yes. The output of a PV cell depends on the irradiance of that cell. The irradiance is strongly linked to the incident angle of the light. This is Lambert's cosine law. In short, the more perpendicular the surface is to the illuminant (the sun), the more energy it will receive.
That's why some solar panels 'track' the sun - so that the panel is perpendi
Slashdotted? (Score:2)
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They are trying to put the servers in a tree like configuration at the moment, and should be operable at an enhanced 20/25% output soon.
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http://www.amnh.org.nyud.net/nationalcenter/youngnaturalistawards/2011/aidan.html [nyud.net]
There's the CORAL link.
Provisional patent? (Score:2)
earned him ... a provisional patent on the design
Two things. One, there is no such thing as a provisional patent. There are provisional patent applications, but provisional patent applications are not separately examined, and patents do not issue from them. They are merely a procedural tool to get yourself an extra year of time to decide whether a patent is worth pursuing on your invention. The only things you need to get yourself a provisional patent application are a specification, a drawing (if applicable), and the filing fee.
Two, the issuance of a
Another Breakthrough?!?! Huzzah!!!!! (Score:2)
At this rate, solar will soon be as common and cheap as sunlight! I for one cannot wait for our solar powered overlords.
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Right; I did have to go outside every once in a while for my astronomy habit.
Cecil Rhodes would agree with you. (Score:3)
One of the four standards by which prospective Rhodes Scholars are judged is, "energy to use one’s talents to the full, as exemplified by fondness for, and success in, sports."
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Sigh.
If you look at his methodology, it's fundamentally flawed. RTFA and do your own analysis if you want.
During the "peak times" for his model, the flat arrangement was maxed out on production. Lots of lost energy. His "extended time of collection" is the sole basis for his supposed power-collection increases on the tree-like setup.
If you were to do the same experiment with PV cells that didn't max out, you'd find far superior collection from that arrangement. His "power gain" is an artifact of clipping, n
Re:Damn straight! (Score:4, Interesting)
SCIENTIFIC METHODLOGY FAIL
Sorry, but his experiment was NOT to determine a better way of generating solar power, if you RTFA it was an experiment to determine why the leaves on trees are arranged in specific patterns. If you study up a bit about photosynthesis, you'll find it has exactly the same "clipping" issues with regards to energy absorption that a cheap solar panel does. It was a pretty ingenious test to determine the (admittedly obvious) conclusion as to why leaves & branches follow the Fibonacci pattern. He probably should have tried some other tree-like but non-Fibonacci based arrangements, but he does address that point somewhat in his conclusions.
I guess you're saying there is no advantage whatsoever in determining the most efficient arrangement of cheap solar panels? They're common enough devices, so why not arrange them efficiently?
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He got modded down because he based his opinion on a photograph which may or may not actually show the experiment. Instead of the article which actually explains that those who are whining about what they see in the photograph are wrong.
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Your rant would be perfectly understandable if he got an award from the IEEE. He didn't. He got a Young Naturalist Award
So he's a nudist?
Re:I hate kids like this! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, if you look at the photos, he WAS outside much of the time!
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Somehow, I don't think the OP was being entirely serious.
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Rotating the flat panel will enable it to collect many times what the tree can (which rotating does nothing for).
Many plants rotate their leaves to follow the sun (to maximize photosynthesis) and orientate them vertically during the night (in order to shade or protect them during the resting period). I know this from watching my chilli plants grow. For them this action is more profound when they are young and growing fast. Older plants seem to be much lazier and slower in orienting their leaves. Maybe leaf quantity becomes quality of it's own and following the sun movent accurately becomes unnecessary or wastes more
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Like a lot of other submitters, you are basing all of your whining on a couple of pictures - which do not show the actual set up of the study.
Whining incorrectly about other people's work is utter bullshit.
Re:And in 5 years... (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never understood this "buy the patent and bury it" meme. For one thing, if something is patented, it's published. Period. For another, patents expire. We should be neck-deep in 100 MPG carbuerators by now.
How do you bury... (Score:2)
...something that has been posted online? Not only is it archived "forever' here in Slashdot, but other mirrors, like "The Internet Archive", Google's cache, etc. It's too late to "bury" it, now.
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Science uses something far, far more powerful than evolution, it uses Intelligent Design!
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Minor quibble: the misuse of 'spiral'.
In that case, I'm calling you on the misuse of "_x increase". The "x" means to multiply. Multiplying by 1 is not an increase. You meant either a "100% increase" or a "2x increase".
Re:Who did this experiment? (Score:5, Funny)
He even made the common bar graph mistake (more) of not starting the scale from zero, instead starting from 4v, which makes the 4.1-4.4v flat solar panel appear as if it puts out less than half of the 5.25 volt from the solar tree.
Mistake? That kid's management material!