A 13 year olds advanced solar array

[DocM]

Aidan's paper....

American Museum of Natural History....

  Quote

Linking Trees? Fibonacci Sequence to Solar Power Wins Student A Young Naturalist Award

When 13-year-old Aidan took a winter hike through the Catskill Mountains, he noticed something spectacular about the bare trees. ?I thought trees were a mess of tangled branches,? he would later recall, ?But [then] I saw a pattern in the way the tree branches grew.?

Armed with a protractor, Aidan measured the angles of the branches and discovered they grew in a Fibonacci sequence?a mathematical pattern that can be observed throughout nature, from the curve of nautilus shells to the spirals of galaxies. In this famous sequence, each number is the sum of the previous two: 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, continuing infinitely. Could this branch pattern help trees absorb more sunlight? Aidan?s pursuit of that question in his essay The Secret of the Fibonacci Sequence in Trees earned him a 2011 Young Naturalist Award.

To test his hypothesis, Aidan constructed a model tree based on the Fibonacci sequence of an oak, using PVC pipes as branches and PV solar panels as leaves. After testing his prototype against a flat solar panel, Aidan confirmed that trees outperformed the traditional model?in winter, by as much as 50 percent.

As it turns out, this distribution of branches minimizes the extent to which limbs shade the leaves below them. And unlike a flat solar panel?which must be mechanically readjusted to follow the Sun?s moving path?a Fibonacci-sequence tree can still absorb light when the Sun sits low in the sky. ?Collecting the most sunlight is the difference between life and death,? wrote Aidan, who thinks humans can put treelike solar panel designs to use, especially in urban spaces where sunlight is scarce. He has already applied for a patent for his PV solar panel tree.

For his next project, Aidan plans on comparing the Fibonacci sequences of different trees to see if one species? branch arrangement is more efficient than another. He knows he?ll find another secret in nature if he just keeps looking up.

[Shadow_Thief]

I also just read this. That's a very very smart 13 year old!

[WolvesHunt]

  Quote

He has already applied for a patent for his PV solar panel tree.

Patents need to go. hes going to sit on it for ever and not actually build a usable working model for the real world

how many 13 years old have millions for R&D ?

[BletchleyPark]

Oddly I remember seeing something similar mentioned on tv a few years back.

[PaulDr]

  On 20/08/2011 at 07:07, WolvesHunt said:

Patents need to go. hes going to sit on it for ever and not actually build a usable working model for the real world

how many 13 years old have millions for R&D ?

Or what will most likely happen is the patent will be bought from him for $$$

[mudslag]

  On 20/08/2011 at 07:40, PaulDr said:

Or what will most likely happen is the patent will be bought from him for $$$

+1 no need to spend millions on R&D when he can just sell the patent and let others go from there.

[McCordRm]

  On 20/08/2011 at 07:07, WolvesHunt said:

Patents need to go. hes going to sit on it for ever and not actually build a usable working model for the real world

how many 13 years old have millions for R&D ?

He came up with the idea. You're saying he doesn't deserve compensation for that, which

is bull****.

[d4diesel]

seems like the comparison is with solar panels mounted on a non movable board. If I were him, I would looks into comparison with solar panels on a dual axis tracking system. I know that the tracking system costs money but it is more efficient, then you need less solar panels which itself saves money in the end.

or better yet, in winter, it could be cheaper to mount a flat solar panel and have a trackable heliostat focusing the light onto the solar panel. nevertheless, him figuring this all out at the age of 13 is pretty impressive.

[FMH]

We really do need more 13 year olds like these. Simply fantastic!

[HawkMan]

  On 20/08/2011 at 08:41, d4diesel said:

seems like the comparison is with solar panels mounted on a non movable board. If I were him, I would looks into comparison with solar panels on a dual axis tracking system. I know that the tracking system costs money but it is more efficient, then you need less solar panels which itself saves money in the end.

or better yet, in winter, it could be cheaper to mount a flat solar panel and have a trackable heliostat focusing the light onto the solar panel. nevertheless, him figuring this all out at the age of 13 is pretty impressive.

Because complex mechanics never break down and if the do they're so cheap to fix, and a giant moving array is just hat you want in your yard...

[Hum]

See kids ? There's no need for college. Just observe Nature. ;)