Homemade Solar Power

Back in November, I got excited about "Melting Rock With Sunlight", after seeing a scientist from the Solar Furnace Research Facility in Southern France demonstrating his concave mirror, focusing the sun's energy, reaching temperatures of over 3500c.

Well, an American teenager has built one of his own, from an old satellite dish and loads of mirror tiles, and has achieved the same sort of results.

As stated in my original post - imagine what you could do with this free energy from the sun? Off the top of my head, a smaller version focusing onto water to heat it for households, or a larger version heating water into steam to generate electricity, seems like a such a simple idea, maybe too simple for anyone to manufacturer. Maybe I should get in contact with Sir James Dyson.



Here's Captain Slow aka James May from his Big Idea series, visiting Spain's Solar Tower..

Melting Rock With Focused Sunlight

Absolutely amazing. Focused sunlight isn't just for burning twigs and scolding ants with a magnifying glass - this reaches temperatures in excess of 3500c "Nothing on Earth can withstand this" says the scientist from the Solar Furnace Research Facility in Southern France. So all this incredible energy from the Sun, is free?! Imagine what else you could do with it.

It's also amazing because I've always thought that the BBC's Bang Goes The Theory is a dumbed down version of the classic science program of yesterday, Tomorrow World, as well as a blatant copy of Mythbusters for those that don't have the Discovery channel.

Thanks to the fantastic Geekologie