If eighteen-year-old Milan Karki doesn’t turn out to be the next Tesla or Edison, then I’ll chop off my locks. This kid invented a solar panel which uses human hair as a conductor and could solve an energy crisis.
As a teenager in a rural village in Napal, Milan Karki knows just how desperately developing countries need an affordable, renewable energy source. Rather than whine about the availability of electricity or the cost of batteries though, he sat down and came up with a solution: low-cost solar panels with human hair conductors.
Solar energy isn’t anything new, but solar panels themselves can be pricey to produce due to using silicon as a conductor. Karki solved the cost issue by using human hair instead since it turns out that Melanin, a colour pigment in hair, is a good conductor. Oh, and did we mention that it’s cheaper than silicon?
Half a kilo of hair can be bought for only 16p in Nepal and lasts a few months, whereas a pack of batteries would cost 50p and last a few nights.
I don’t know why they’re selling hair by the kilo, but this idea is absolutely brilliant and I can’t wait to see if it turns into something widely used. [Daily Mail]
Bob Broedel
September 10, 2009 at 5:00 AM
Great discovery. It would have been better if this would have been written up in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. I’m just saying …
Report PermalinkCaesarDia
September 10, 2009 at 10:20 AM
@craighyatt
If you had read and understood the abstract you would realise that the paper shows conductivities for *isolated* melanins (i.e. purified and not inside hair protein) of 10^-11 S/m (Siemens per metre). This is the inverse of the resistivity, i.e. it has a resistance of 10^11 Ohm-metres.
If you are incredibly generous and assume that the panel is pure melanin and that the paper has accurately calculated the electronic properties; if the panel has a cross-sectional area of 0.09m^2 and is 100um between contacts (i.e. a panel 30cm on a side and 1 hair thick with perfect electrical contacts), this would lead to an internal resistance for the panel of ~1 gigaohm.
For the panel to be putting out 18W at 9V, 2A of current is flowing. Since Power=Current*Current*Resistance, the power dissipated across the internal resistance is *4GW*.
My PhD is in Organic Materials for Photovoltaics
@MePerson
Both the sebum on your hair and the hair itself are insulators. The major source of charge dissipation from charged hair would be moisture in the air, hence the reason why your hair will only stand on end on dry days.
Report PermalinkCraig Hyatt
September 11, 2009 at 3:10 AM
“If you had read and understood the abstract you would realise that the paper shows conductivities for *isolated* melanins (i.e. purified and not inside hair protein)…”
I knew immediately this was a hoax for the reasons you mention. I was not supporting the project, merely commenting on the current state of research. In fact, I have made a debunking site that seems to be squashing this project: http://sites.google.com/site/edwardcraighyatt/hairsolarpanelnepal
P.S. I was just kidding about your PhD being in cosmetology. No offense intended.
Report PermalinkCaesarDia
September 11, 2009 at 11:02 AM
Sorry Craig! I detest bad science (esp. when it’s in my field) so I had my “Must Flame” hat on. That’s an excellent review you’ve put together by the way.
Report PermalinkCraig Hyatt
September 11, 2009 at 2:56 AM
@MePerson See http://sites.google.com/site/edwardcraighyatt/hairsolarpanelnepal
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